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Title: Burmese Days

Date of first publication: 1934

Author: Eric Blair (as George Orwell) (1903-1950)

Date first posted: May 21, 2018

Date last updated: May 21, 2018

Faded Page eBook #20180520

This ebook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Cindy Beyer
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

GEORGE ORWELL

Burmese Days

This desert inaccessible

Under the shade of melancholy boughs.

As You Like It

First published in the USA by Harper & Brothers, New York 1934

Published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz 1935

Copyright 1934 by Eric Blair

I

U Po Kyin, Sub-divisional Magistrate of Kyauktada,
in Upper Burma, was sitting in his veranda. It was only
half-past eight, but the month was April, and there was a
closeness in the air, a threat of the long stifling midday
hours. Occasional faint breaths of wind, seeming cool by
contrast, stirred the newly-drenched orchids that hung
from the eaves. Beyond the orchids one could see the
dusty, curved trunk of a palm tree, and then the blazing
ultramarine sky. Up in the zenith, so high that it dazzled
one to look at them, a few vultures circled without the
quiver of a wing.

Unblinking, rather like a great porcelain idol, U Po
Kyin gazed out into the fierce sunlight. He was a man of
fifty, so fat that for years he had not risen from his chair
without help, and yet shapely and even beautiful in his
grossness; for the Burmese do not sag and bulge like white
men, but grow fat symmetrically, like fruits swelling. His
face was vast, yellow and quite unwrinkled, and his eyes
were tawny. His feet—squat, high-arched feet with the
toes all the same length—were bare, and so was his cropped
head, and he wore one of those vivid Arakanese longyis
with green and magenta checks which the Burmese wear
on informal occasions. He was chewing betel from a
lacquered box on the table, and thinking about his past life.

It had been a brilliantly successful life. U Po Kyin’s
earliest memory, back in the ’eighties, was of standing, a
naked pot-bellied child, watching the British troops march
victorious into Mandalay. He remembered the terror he
had felt of those columns of great beef-fed men, red-faced
and red-coated; and the long rifles over their shoulders, and
the heavy, rhythmic tramp of their boots. He had taken
to his heels after watching them for a few minutes. In his
childish way he had grasped that his own people were no
match for this race of giants. To fight on the side of the
British, to become a parasite upon them, had been his
ruling ambition, even as a child.

At seventeen he had tried for a Government appointment,
but he had failed to get it, being poor and friendless,
and for three years he had worked in the stinking labyrinth
of the Mandalay bazaars, clerking for the rice merchants
and sometimes stealing. Then when he was twenty a lucky
stroke of blackmail put him in possession of four hundred
rupees, and he went at once to Rangoon and bought his
way into a Government clerkship. The job was a lucrative
one though the salary was small. At that time a ring of
clerks were making a steady income by misappropriating
Government stores, and Po Kyin (he was plain Po Kyin
then: the honorific U came years later) took naturally to
this kind of thing. However, he had too much talent to
spend his life in a clerkship, stealing miserably in annas and
pice. One day he discovered that the Government, being
short of minor officials, were going to make some appointments
from among the clerks. The news would have
become public in another week, but it was one of Po
Kyin’s qualities that his information was always a week
ahead of everyone else’s. He saw his chance and denounced
all his confederates before they could take alarm. Most of
them were sent to prison, and Po Kyin was made an
Assistant Township Officer as the reward of his honesty.
Since then he had risen steadily. Now, at fifty-six, he was
a Sub-divisional Magistrate, and he would probably be
promoted still further and made an acting Deputy Commissioner,
with Englishmen as his equals and even his
subordinates.

As a magistrate his methods were simple. Even for the
vastest bribe he would never sell the decision of a case,
because he knew that a magistrate who gives wrong judgments
is caught sooner or later. His practice, a much safer
one, was to take bribes from both sides and then decide the
case on strictly legal grounds. This won him a useful
reputation for impartiality. Besides his revenue from litigants,
U Po Kyin levied a ceaseless toll, a sort of private
taxation scheme, from all the villages under his jurisdiction.
If any village failed in its tribute U Po Kyin took punitive
measures—gangs of dacoits attacked the village, leading
villagers were arrested on false charges, and so forth—and
it was never long before the amount was paid up. He also
shared the proceeds of all the larger-sized robberies that
took place in the district. Most of this, of course, was
known to everyone except U Po Kyin’s official superiors
(no British officer will ever believe anything against his
own men) but the attempts to expose him invariably failed;
his supporters, kept loyal by their share of the loot, were
too numerous. When any accusation was brought against
him, U Po Kyin simply discredited it with strings of
suborned witnesses, following this up by counter-accusations
which left him in a stronger position than ever.
He was practically invulnerable, because he was too fine a
judge of men ever to choose a wrong instrument, and also
because he was too absorbed in intrigue ever to fail through
carelessness or ignorance. One could say with practical
certainty that he would never be found out, that he would
go from success to success, and would finally die full of
honour, worth several lakhs of rupees.

And even beyond the grave his success would continue.
According to Buddhist belief, those who have done evil in
their lives will spend the next incarnation in the shape of
a rat, a frog or some other low animal. U Po Kyin was
a good Buddhist and intended to provide against this
danger. He would devote his closing years to good works,
which would pile up enough merit to outweigh the rest
of his life. Probably his good works would take the form
of building pagodas. Four pagodas, five, six, seven—the
priests would tell him how many—with carved stonework,
gilt umbrellas and little bells that tinkled in the wind,
every tinkle a prayer. And he would return to the earth in
male human shape—for a woman ranks at about the same
level as a rat or a frog—or at worst as some dignified beast
such as an elephant.

All these thoughts flowed through U Po Kyin’s mind
swiftly and for the most part in pictures. His brain, though
cunning, was quite barbaric, and it never worked except
for some definite end; mere meditation was beyond him.
He had now reached the point to which his thoughts had
been tending. Putting his smallish, triangular hands on the
arms of his chair, he turned himself a little way round and
called, rather wheezily:

‘Ba Taik! Hey, Ba Taik!’

Ba Taik, U Po Kyin’s servant, appeared through the
beaded curtain of the veranda. He was an undersized, pock-marked
man with a timid and rather hungry expression.
U Po Kyin paid him no wages, for he was a convicted thief
whom a word would send to prison. As Ba Taik advanced
he shikoed, so low as to give the impression that he was
stepping backwards.

‘Most holy god?’ he said.

‘Is anyone waiting to see me, Ba Taik?’

Ba Taik enumerated the visitors upon his fingers: ‘There
is the headman of Thitpingyi village, your honour, who
has brought presents, and two villagers who have an assault
case that is to be tried by your honour, and they too have
brought presents. Ko Ba Sein, the head clerk of the Deputy
Commissioner’s office, wishes to see you, and there is Ali
Shah, the police constable, and a dacoit whose name I do
not know. I think they have quarrelled about some gold
bangles they have stolen. And there is also a young village
girl with a baby.’

‘What does she want?’ said U Po Kyin.

‘She says that the baby is yours, most holy one.’

‘Ah. And how much has the headman brought?’

Ba Taik thought it was only ten rupees and a basket of
mangoes.

‘Tell the headman,’ said U Po Kyin, ‘that it should be
twenty rupees, and there will be trouble for him and his
village if the money is not here tomorrow. I will see the
others presently. Ask Ko Ba Sein to come to me here.’

Ba Sein appeared in a moment. He was an erect, narrow-shouldered
man, very tall for a Burman, with a curiously
smooth face that recalled a coffee blancmange. U Po Kyin
found him a useful tool. Unimaginative and hardworking,
he was an excellent clerk, and Mr Macgregor, the Deputy
Commissioner, trusted him with most of his official secrets.
U Po Kyin, put in a good temper by his thoughts, greeted
Ba Sein with a laugh and waved to the betel box.

He produced a copy of a bilingual paper called the
Burmese Patriot. It was a miserable eight-page rag, villainously
printed on paper as bad as blotting-paper, and composed
partly of news stolen from the Rangoon Gazette,
partly of weak Nationalist heroics. On the last page the
type had slipped and left the entire sheet jet-black, as though
in mourning for the smallness of the paper’s circulation.
The article to which U Po Kyin turned was of a rather
different stamp from the rest. It ran:

In these happy times, when we poor blacks are being
uplifted by the mighty western civilisation, with its
manifold blessings such as the cinematograph, machine-guns,
syphilis, etc., what subject could be more inspiring
than the private lives of our European benefactors? We
think therefore that it may interest our readers to hear
something of events in the up-country district of
Kyauktada. And especially of Mr Macgregor, honoured
Deputy Commissioner of said district.

Mr Macgregor is of the type of the Fine Old English
Gentleman, such as, in these happy days, we have so
many examples before our eyes. He is ‘a family man’ as
our dear English cousins say. Very much a family man
is Mr Macgregor. So much so that he has already three
children in the district of Kyauktada, where he has been
a year, and in his last district of Shwemyo he left six
young progenies behind him. Perhaps it is an oversight
on Mr Macgregor’s part that he has left these young
infants quite unprovided for, and that some of their
mothers are in danger of starvation, etc. etc. etc.

There was a column of similar stuff, and wretched as it
was, it was well above the level of the rest of the paper.
U Po Kyin read the article carefully through, holding it at
arm’s length—he was long-sighted—and drawing his lips
meditatively back, exposing great numbers of small, perfect
teeth, blood-red from betel juice.

‘The editor will get six months’ imprisonment for this,’
he said finally.

‘He does not mind. He says that the only time when his
creditors leave him alone is when he is in prison.’

‘And you say that your little apprentice clerk Hla Pe
wrote this article all by himself? That is a very clever
boy—a most promising boy! Never tell me again that these
Government High Schools are a waste of time. Hla Pe shall
certainly have his clerkship.’

‘You think, then, sir, that this article will be enough?’

U Po Kyin did not answer immediately. A puffing,
labouring noise had begun to proceed from him; he was
trying to rise from his chair. Ba Taik was familiar with this
sound. He appeared from behind the beaded curtain, and
he and Ba Sein put a hand under each of U Po Kyin’s
armpits and hoisted him to his feet. U Po Kyin stood for
a moment balancing the weight of his belly upon his legs,
with the movement of a fish porter adjusting his load.
Then he waved Ba Taik away.

‘Not enough,’ he said, answering Ba Sein’s question,
‘not enough by any means. There is a lot to be done yet.
But this is the right beginning. Listen.’

He went to the rail to spit out a scarlet mouthful of betel,
and then began to quarter the veranda with short steps, his
hands behind his back. The friction of his vast thighs made
him waddle slightly. As he walked he talked, in the base
jargon of the Government offices—a patchwork of
Burmese verbs and English abstract phrases:

‘Now, let us go into this affair from the beginning. We
are going to make a concerted attack on Dr Veraswami,
who is the Civil Surgeon and Superintendent of the jail.
We are going to slander him, destroy his reputation and
finally ruin him for ever. It will be rather a delicate operation.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘There will be no risk, but we have got to go slowly.
We are not proceeding against a miserable clerk or police
constable. We are proceeding against a high official, and
with a high official, even when he is an Indian, it is not the
same as with a clerk. How does one ruin a clerk? Easy; an
accusation, two dozen witnesses, dismissal and imprisonment.
But that will not do here. Softly, softly, softly is my
way. No scandal, and above all no official inquiry. There
must be no accusations that can be answered, and yet
within three months I must fix it in the head of every
European in Kyauktada that the doctor is a villain. What
shall I accuse him of? Bribes will not do, a doctor does not
get bribes to any extent. What then?’

‘We could perhaps arrange a mutiny in the jail,’ said Ba
Sein. ‘As superintendent, the doctor would be blamed.’

‘No, it is too dangerous. I do not want the jail warders
firing their rifles in all directions. Besides, it would
be expensive. Clearly, then, it must be disloyalty—Nationalism,
seditious propaganda. We must persuade the
Europeans that the doctor holds disloyal, anti-British
opinions. That is far worse than bribery; they expect a
native official to take bribes. But let them suspect his
loyalty even for a moment, and he is ruined.’

‘It would be a hard thing to prove,’ objected Ba Sein.
‘The doctor is very loyal to the Europeans. He grows angry
when anything is said against them. They will know that,
do you not think?’

‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said U Po Kyin comfortably. ‘No
European cares anything about proofs. When a man has
a black face, suspicion is proof. A few anonymous letters
will work wonders. It is only a question of persisting;
accuse, accuse, go on accusing—that is the way with
Europeans. One anonymous letter after another, to every
European in turn. And then, when their suspicions are
thoroughly aroused——’ U Po Kyin brought one short
arm from behind his back and clicked his thumb and
finger. He added: ‘We begin with this article in the Burmese
Patriot. The Europeans will shout with rage when they see
it. Well, the next move is to persuade them that it was the
doctor who wrote it.’

‘It will be difficult while he has friends among the
Europeans. All of them go to him when they are ill. He
cured Mr Macgregor of his flatulence this cold weather.
They consider him a very clever doctor, I believe.’

‘How little you understand the European mind, Ko Ba
Sein! If the Europeans go to Veraswami it is only because
there is no other doctor in Kyauktada. No European has
any faith in a man with a black face. No, with anonymous
letters it is only a question of sending enough. I shall soon
see to it that he has no friends left.’

‘There is Mr Flory, the timber merchant,’ said Ba Sein.
(He pronounced it ‘Mr Porley’.) ‘He is a close friend of the
doctor. I see him go to his house every morning when he
is in Kyauktada. Twice he has even invited the doctor to
dinner.’

‘Ah, now there you are right. If Flory were a friend of
the doctor it could do us harm. You cannot hurt an Indian
when he has a European friend. It gives him—what is that
word they are so fond of?—prestige. But Flory will desert
his friend quickly enough when the trouble begins. These
people have no feeling of loyalty towards a native. Besides,
I happen to know that Flory is a coward. I can deal with
him. Your part, Ko Ba Sein, is to watch Mr Macgregor’s
movements. Has he written to the Commissioner lately—written
confidentially, I mean?’

‘He wrote two days ago, but when we steamed the letter
open we found it was nothing of importance.’

‘Ah well, we will give him something to write about.
And as soon as he suspects the doctor, then is the time for
that other affair I spoke to you of. Thus we shall—what
does Mr Macgregor say? Ah yes, “kill two birds with one
stone”. A whole flock of birds—ha, ha!’

U Po Kyin’s laugh was a disgusting bubbling sound
deep down in his belly, like the preparation for a cough;
yet it was merry, even childlike. He did not say any more
about the ‘other affair’, which was too private to be discussed
even upon the veranda. Ba Sein, seeing the interview
at an end, stood up and bowed, angular as a jointed ruler.

‘Is there anything else your honour wishes done?’ he
said.

‘Make sure that Mr Macgregor has his copy of the
Burmese Patriot. You had better tell Hla Pe to have an attack
of dysentery and stay away from office. I shall want him
for the writing of the anonymous letters. That is all for the
present.’

‘Then I may go, sir?’

‘God go with you,’ said U Po Kyin rather abstractedly,
and at once shouted again for Ba Taik. He never wasted
a moment of his day. It did not take him long to deal with
the other visitors and to send the village girl away unrewarded,
having examined her face and said that he did
not recognise her. It was now his breakfast time. Violent
pangs of hunger, which attacked him punctually at this
hour every morning, began to torment his belly. He
shouted urgently:

In the living-room behind the curtain a table was already
set out with a huge bowl of rice and a dozen plates
containing curries, dried prawns and sliced green mangoes.
U Po Kyin waddled to the table, sat down with a grunt
and at once threw himself on the food. Ma Kin, his wife,
stood behind him and served him. She was a thin woman
of five and forty, with a kindly, pale brown, simian face.
U Po Kyin took no notice of her while he was eating. With
the bowl close to his nose he stuffed the food into himself
with swift greasy fingers, breathing fast. All his meals were
swift, passionate and enormous; they were not meals so
much as orgies, debauches of curry and rice. When he had
finished he sat back, belched several times and told Ma Kin
to fetch him a green Burmese cigar. He never smoked
English tobacco, which he declared had no taste in it.

Presently, with Ba Taik’s help, U Po Kyin dressed in his
office clothes, and stood for a while admiring himself in
the long mirror in the living-room. It was a wooden-walled
room with two pillars, still recognisable as teak-trunks,
supporting the roof-tree, and it was dark and
sluttish as all Burmese rooms are, though U Po Kyin had
furnished it ‘Ingaleik fashion’ with a veneered sideboard
and chairs, some lithographs of the Royal Family, and a
fire-extinguisher. The floor was covered with bamboo
mats, much splashed by lime and betel juice.

Ma Kin was sitting on a mat in the corner, stitching an
ingyi. U Po Kyin turned slowly before the mirror, trying
to get a glimpse of his back view. He was dressed in a
gaungbaung of pale pink silk, an ingyi of starched muslin,
and a paso of Mandalay silk, a gorgeous salmon-pink
brocaded with yellow. With an effort he turned his head
round and looked, pleased, at the paso tight and shining on
his enormous buttocks. He was proud of his fatness,
because he saw the accumulated flesh as the symbol of his
greatness. He who had once been obscure and hungry was
now fat, rich and feared. He was swollen with the bodies
of his enemies; a thought from which he extracted something
very near poetry.

‘My new paso was cheap at twenty-two rupees, hey, Kin
Kin?’ he said.

Ma Kin bent her head over her sewing. She was a
simple, old-fashioned woman, who had learned even less
of European habits than U Po Kyin. She could not sit on
a chair without discomfort. Every morning she went to the
bazaar with a basket on her head, like a village woman, and
in the evenings she could be seen kneeling in the garden,
praying to the white spire of the pagoda that crowned the
town. She had been the confidante of U Po Kyin’s intrigues
for twenty years and more.

‘Ko Po Kyin,’ she said, ‘you have done very much evil
in your life.’

U Po Kyin waved his hand. ‘What does it matter?
My pagodas will atone for everything. There is plenty of
time.’

Ma Kin bent her head over her sewing again, in an
obstinate way she had when she disapproved of something
that U Po Kyin was doing.

‘But, Ko Po Kyin, where is the need of all this scheming
and intriguing? I heard you talking with Ko Ba Sein on
the veranda. You are planning some evil against Dr
Veraswami. Why do you wish to harm that Indian doctor?
He is a good man.’

‘What do you know of these official matters, woman?
The doctor stands in my way. In the first place he refuses
to take bribes, which makes it difficult for the rest of us.
And besides—well, there is something else which you
would never have the brains to understand.’

‘Ko Po Kyin, you have grown rich and powerful, and
what good has it ever done you? We were happier when
we were poor. Ah, I remember so well when you were
only a Township Officer, the first time we had a house of
our own. How proud we were of our new wicker furniture,
and your fountain pen with the gold clip! And when
the young English police officer came to our house and sat
in the best chair and drank a bottle of beer, how honoured
we thought ourselves! Happiness is not in money. What
can you want with more money now?’

‘Nonsense, woman, nonsense! Attend to your cooking
and sewing and leave official matters to those who understand
them.’

‘Well, I do not know. I am your wife and have always
obeyed you. But at least it is never too soon to acquire
merit. Strive to acquire more merit, Ko Po Kyin! Will you
not, for instance, buy some live fish and set them free in the
river? One can acquire much merit in that way. Also, this
morning when the priests came for their rice they told me
that there are two new priests at the monastery, and they
are hungry. Will you not give them something, Ko Po
Kyin? I did not give them anything myself, so that you
might acquire the merit of doing it.’

U Po Kyin turned away from the mirror. The appeal
touched him a little. He never, when it could be done
without inconvenience, missed a chance of acquiring
merit. In his eyes his pile of merit was a kind of bank-deposit,
everlastingly growing. Every fish set free in the
river, every gift to a priest, was a step nearer Nirvana. It
was a reassuring thought. He directed that the basket of
mangoes brought by the village headman should be sent
down to the monastery.

Presently he left the house and started down the road,
with Ba Taik behind him carrying a file of papers. He
walked slowly, very upright to balance his vast belly, and
holding a yellow silk umbrella over his head. His pink paso
glittered in the sun like a satin praline. He was going to the
court, to try his day’s cases.

II

At about the time when U Po Kyin began his morning’s
business, ‘Mr Porley’, the timber merchant and friend
of Dr Veraswami, was leaving his house for the Club.

Flory was a man of about thirty-five, of middle height,
not ill made. He had very black, stiff hair growing low on
his head, and a cropped black moustache, and his skin,
naturally sallow, was discoloured by the sun. Not having
grown fat or bald he did not look older than his age, but
his face was very haggard in spite of the sunburn, with lank
cheeks and a sunken, withered look round the eyes. He had
obviously not shaved this morning. He was dressed in the
usual white shirt, khaki drill shorts and stockings, but
instead of a topi he wore a battered Terai hat, cocked over
one eye. He carried a bamboo stick with a wrist-thong, and
a black cocker spaniel named Flo was ambling after him.

All these were secondary expressions, however. The first
thing that one noticed in Flory was a hideous birthmark
stretching in a ragged crescent down his left cheek, from
the eye to the corner of the mouth. Seen from the left side
his face had a battered, woe-begone look, as though the
birthmark had been a bruise—for it was a dark blue in
colour. He was quite aware of its hideousness. And at all
times, when he was not alone, there was a sidelongness
about his movements, as he manoeuvred constantly to
keep the birthmark out of sight.

Flory’s house was at the top of the maidan, close to the
edge of the jungle. From the gate the maidan sloped
sharply down, scorched and khaki-coloured, with half a
dozen dazzling white bungalows scattered round it. All
quaked, shivered in the hot air. There was an English
cemetery within a white wall half-way down the hill, and
near by a tiny tin-roofed church. Beyond that was the
European Club, and when one looked at the Club—a
dumpy one-storey wooden building—one looked at the
real centre of the town. In any town in India the European
Club is the spiritual citadel, the real seat of the British
power, the Nirvana for which native officials and millionaires
pine in vain. It was doubly so in this case, for it was
the proud boast of Kyauktada Club that, almost alone of
Clubs in Burma, it had never admitted an Oriental to
membership. Beyond the Club, the Irrawaddy flowed
huge and ochreous, glittering like diamonds in the patches
that caught the sun; and beyond the river stretched great
wastes of paddy fields, ending at the horizon in a range of
blackish hills.

The native town, and the courts and the jail, were over to
the right, mostly hidden in green groves of peepul trees.
The spire of the pagoda rose from the trees like a slender
spear tipped with gold. Kyauktada was a fairly typical
Upper Burma town, that had not changed greatly between
the days of Marco Polo and the Second Burma War, and
might have slept in the Middle Ages for a century more
if it had not proved a convenient spot for a railway
terminus. In 1910 the Government made it the headquarters
of a district and a seat of Progress—interpretable as a block
of law-courts, with their army of fat but ravenous pleaders,
a hospital, a school and one of those huge, durable jails
which the English have built everywhere between Gibraltar
and Hong Kong. The population was about four
thousand, including a couple of hundred Indians, a few
score Chinese, and seven Europeans. There were also two
Eurasians named Mr Francis and Mr Samuel, the sons of
an American Baptist missionary and a Roman Catholic
missionary respectively. The town contained no curiosities
of any kind, except an Indian fakir who had lived for
twenty years in a tree near the bazaar, drawing his food up
in a basket every morning.

Flory yawned as he came out of the gate. He had been
half drunk the night before, and the glare made him feel
liverish. ‘Bloody, bloody hole!’ he thought, looking down
the hill. And, no one except the dog being near, he began
to sing aloud ‘Bloody, bloody, bloody, oh, how thou art
bloody’ to the tune of ‘Holy, holy, holy, oh how Thou art
holy’, as he walked down the hot red road, switching at
the dried-up grasses with his stick. It was nearly nine
o’clock and the sun was fiercer every minute. The heat
throbbed down on one’s head with a steady, rhythmic
thumping like blows from an enormous bolster. Flory
stopped at the Club gate, wondering whether to go in or
to go further down the road and see Dr Veraswami. Then
he remembered that it was ‘English mail day’ and the
newspapers would have arrived. He went in, past the big
tennis screen, which was overgrown by a creeper with
starlike mauve flowers.

In the borders beside the path swaths of English flowers—phlox
and larkspur, hollyhock and petunia—not yet
slain by the sun, rioted in vast size and richness. The
petunias were huge, like trees almost. There was no lawn,
but instead a shrubbery of native trees and bushes—gold
mohur trees like vast umbrellas of blood-red bloom,
frangipanis with creamy, stalkless flowers, purple bougainvillea,
scarlet hibiscus and the pink Chinese rose, bilious-green
crotons, feathery fronds of tamarind. The clash of
colours hurt one’s eyes in the glare. A nearly naked mali,
watering-can in hand, was moving in the jungle of flowers
like some large nectar-sucking bird.

On the Club steps a sandy-haired Englishman, with a
prickly moustache, pale grey eyes too far apart, and
abnormally thin calves to his legs, was standing with his
hands in the pockets of his shorts. This was Mr Westfield,
the District Superintendent of Police. With a very bored
air he was rocking himself backwards and forwards on
his heels and pouting his upper lip so that his moustache
tickled his nose. He greeted Flory with a slight sideways
movement of his head. His way of speaking was clipped
and soldierly, missing out every word that well could be
missed out. Nearly everything he said was intended for
a joke, but the tone of his voice was hollow and melancholy.

‘Hullo, Flory me lad. Bloody awful morning, what?’

‘We must expect it at this time of year, I suppose,’ Flory
said. He had turned himself a little sideways, so that his
birthmarked cheek was away from Westfield.

‘Yes, dammit. Couple of months of this coming. Last
year we didn’t have a spot of rain till June. Look at that
bloody sky, not a cloud in it. Like one of those damned
great blue enamel saucepans. God! What’d you give to be
in Piccadilly now, eh?’

‘Have the English papers come?’

‘Yes. Dear old Punch, Pink’un and Vie Parisienne. Makes
you homesick to read ’em, what? Let’s come in and have
a drink before the ice all goes. Old Lackersteen’s been fairly
bathing in it. Half pickled already.’

They went in, Westfield remarking in his gloomy voice,
‘Lead on, Macduff.’ Inside, the Club was a teak-walled
place smelling of earth-oil, and consisting of only four
rooms, one of which contained a forlorn ‘library’ of five
hundred mildewed novels, and another an old and mangy
billiard-table—this, however, seldom used, for during
most of the year hordes of flying beetles came buzzing
round the lamps and littered themselves over the cloth.
There were also a card-room and a ‘lounge’ which looked
towards the river, over a wide veranda; but at this time of
day all the verandas were curtained with green bamboo
chicks. The lounge was an unhomelike room, with coco-nut
matting on the floor, and wicker chairs and tables
which were littered with shiny illustrated papers. For ornament
there were a number of ‘Bonzo’ pictures, and the
dusty skulls of sambhur. A punkah, lazily flapping, shook
dust into the tepid air.

There were three men in the room. Under the punkah
a florid, fine-looking, slightly bloated man of forty was
sprawling across the table with his head in his hands,
groaning in pain. This was Mr Lackersteen, the local
manager of a timber firm. He had been badly drunk the
night before, and he was suffering for it. Ellis, local
manager of yet another company, was standing before the
notice-board studying some notice with a look of bitter
concentration. He was a tiny wiry-haired fellow with a
pale sharp-featured face and restless movements. Maxwell,
the acting Divisional Forest Officer, was lying in one of the
long chairs reading the Field, and invisible except for two
large-boned legs and thick downy forearms.

‘Look at this naughty old man,’ said Westfield, taking
Mr Lackersteen half affectionately by the shoulders and
shaking him. ‘Example to the young, what? There but for
the grace of God and all that. Gives you an idea what
you’ll be like at forty.’

Mr Lackersteen gave a groan which sounded like
‘brandy’.

‘Poor old chap,’ said Westfield; ‘regular martyr to
booze, eh? Look at it oozing out of his pores. Reminds me
of the old colonel who used to sleep without a mosquito
net. They asked his servant why and the servant said: “At
night, master too drunk to notice mosquitoes; in the morning,
mosquitoes too drunk to notice master.” Look at
him—boozed last night and then asking for more. Got a
little niece coming to stay with him, too. Due tonight, isn’t
she, Lackersteen?’

‘Oh, leave that drunken sot alone,’ said Ellis without
turning round. He had a spiteful Cockney voice. Mr
Lackersteen groaned again, ‘—— the niece! Get me some
brandy, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Good education for the niece, eh? Seeing uncle under
the table seven times a week. —— Hey, butler! Bringing
brandy for Lackersteen master!’

The butler, a dark stout Dravidian with liquid yellow-irised
eyes like those of a dog, brought the brandy on a
brass tray. Flory and Westfield ordered gin. Mr Lackersteen
swallowed a few spoonfuls of brandy and sat back in
his chair, groaning in a more resigned way. He had a beefy,
ingenuous face, with a toothbrush moustache. He was
really a very simple-minded man, with no ambitions
beyond having what he called ‘a good time’. His wife
governed him by the only possible method, namely, by
never letting him out of her sight for more than an hour
or two. Only once, a year after they were married, she had
left him for a fortnight, and had returned unexpectedly a
day before her time, to find Mr Lackersteen, drunk, supported
on either side by a naked Burmese girl, while a third
up-ended a whisky bottle into his mouth. Since then she
had watched him, as he used to complain, ‘like a cat over
a bloody mousehole’. However, he managed to enjoy
quite a number of ‘good times’, though they were usually
rather hurried ones.

‘My Christ, what a head I’ve got on me this morning,’
he said. ‘Call that butler again, Westfield. I’ve got to have
another brandy before my missus gets here. She says she’s
going to cut my booze down to four pegs a day when our
niece gets here. God rot them both!’ he added gloomily.

‘Stop playing the fool, all of you, and listen to this,’ said
Ellis sourly. He had a queer wounding way of speaking,
hardly ever opening his mouth without insulting somebody.
He deliberately exaggerated his Cockney accent,
because of the sardonic tone it gave to his words. ‘Have you
seen this notice of old Macgregor’s? A little nosegay for
everyone. Maxwell, wake up and listen!’

Maxwell lowered the Field. He was a fresh-coloured
blond youth of not more than twenty-five or -six—very
young for the post he held. With his heavy limbs and thick
white eyelashes he reminded one of a carthorse colt. Ellis
nipped the notice from the board with a neat, spiteful little
movement and began reading it aloud. It had been posted
by Mr Macgregor, who, besides being Deputy Commissioner,
was secretary of the Club.

‘Just listen to this. “It has been suggested that as there are
as yet no Oriental members of this club, and as it is now
usual to admit officials of gazetted rank, whether native or
European, to membership of most European Clubs, we
should consider the question of following this practice in
Kyauktada. The matter will be open for discussion at the
next general meeting. On the one hand it may be pointed
out”—oh, well, no need to wade through the rest of it. He
can’t even write out a notice without an attack of literary
diarrhoea. Anyway, the point’s this. He’s asking us to break
all our rules and take a dear little nigger-boy into this Club.
Dear Dr Veraswami, for instance. Dr Very-slimy, I call
him. That would be a treat, wouldn’t it? Little pot-bellied
niggers breathing garlic in your face over the bridge table.
Christ, to think of it! We’ve got to hang together and put
our foot down on this at once. What do you say, Westfield?
Flory?’

Westfield shrugged his thin shoulders philosophically.
He had sat down at the table and lighted a black, stinking
Burma cheroot.

‘Got to put up with it, I suppose,’ he said. ‘B——s of
natives are getting into all the Clubs nowadays. Even the
Pegu Club, I’m told. Way this country’s going, you know.
We’re about the last Club in Burma to hold out against
’em.’

‘We are; and what’s more, we’re damn well going to
go on holding out. I’ll die in the ditch before I’ll see a nigger
in here.’ Ellis had produced a stump of pencil. With the
curious air of spite that some men can put into their tiniest
action, he re-pinned the notice on the board and pencilled
a tiny, neat ‘B F’ against Mr Macgregor’s signature—‘There,
that’s what I think of his idea. I’ll tell him so when
he comes down. What do you say, Flory?’

Flory had not spoken all this time. Though by nature
anything but a silent man, he seldom found much to say
in Club conversations. He had sat down at the table and
was reading G. K. Chesterton’s article in the London News,
at the same time caressing Flo’s head with his left hand.
Ellis, however, was one of those people who constantly nag
others to echo their own opinions. He repeated his question,
and Flory looked up, and their eyes met. The skin
round Ellis’s nose suddenly turned so pale that it was almost
grey. In him it was a sign of anger. Without any prelude
he burst into a stream of abuse that would have been
startling, if the others had not been used to hearing something
like it every morning.

‘My God, I should have thought in a case like this, when
it’s a question of keeping those black, stinking swine out
of the only place where we can enjoy ourselves, you’d have
the decency to back me up. Even if that pot-bellied, greasy
little sod of a nigger doctor is your best pal. I don’t care
if you choose to pal up with the scum of the bazaar. If it
pleases you to go to Veraswami’s house and drink whisky
with all his nigger pals, that’s your look-out. Do what you
like outside the Club. But, by God, it’s a different matter
when you talk of bringing niggers in here. I suppose you’d
like little Veraswami for a Club member, eh? Chipping
into our conversation and pawing everyone with his
sweaty hands and breathing his filthy garlic breath in our
faces. By God, he’d go out with my boot behind him if
ever I saw his black snout inside that door. Greasy, pot-bellied
little ——!’ etc.

This went on for several minutes. It was curiously impressive,
because it was so completely sincere. Ellis really
did hate Orientals—hated them with a bitter, restless loathing
as of something evil or unclean. Living and working,
as the assistant of a timber firm must, in perpetual contact
with the Burmese, he had never grown used to the sight
of a black face. Any hint of friendly feeling towards an
Oriental seemed to him a horrible perversity. He was an
intelligent man and an able servant of his firm, but he was
one of those Englishmen—common, unfortunately—who
should never be allowed to set foot in the East.

Flory sat nursing Flo’s head in his lap, unable to meet
Ellis’s eyes. At the best of times his birthmark made it
difficult for him to look people straight in the face. And
when he made ready to speak, he could feel his voice
trembling—for it had a way of trembling when it should
have been firm; his features, too, sometimes twitched uncontrollably.

‘Steady on,’ he said at last, sullenly and rather feebly.
‘Steady on. There’s no need to get so excited. I never
suggested having any native members in here.’

‘Oh, didn’t you? We all know bloody well you’d like
to, though. Why else do you go to that oily little babu’s
house every morning, then? Sitting down at table with
him as though he was a white man, and drinking out of
glasses his filthy black lips have slobbered over—it makes
me spew to think of it.’

‘My God,’ said Ellis a little more calmly, taking a pace
or two up and down, ‘my God, I don’t understand you
chaps. I simply don’t. Here’s that old fool Macgregor
wanting to bring a nigger into this Club for no reason
whatever, and you all sit down under it without a word.
Good God, what are we supposed to be doing in this
country? If we aren’t going to rule, why the devil don’t
we clear out? Here we are, supposed to be governing a set
of damn black swine who’ve been slaves since the beginning
of history, and instead of ruling them in the only way
they understand, we go and treat them as equals. And all
you silly b——s take it for granted. There’s Flory, makes
his best pal of a black babu who calls himself a doctor
because he’s done two years at an Indian so-called university.
And you, Westfield, proud as Punch of your knock-kneed,
bribe-taking cowards of policemen. And there’s
Maxwell, spends his time running after Eurasian tarts. Yes,
you do, Maxwell; I heard about your goings-on in Mandalay
with some smelly little bitch called Molly Pereira. I
suppose you’d have gone and married her if they hadn’t
transferred you up here? You all seem to like the dirty black
brutes. Christ, I don’t know what’s come over us all. I
really don’t.’

‘Come on, have another drink,’ said Westfield. ‘Hey,
butler! Spot of beer before the ice goes, eh? Beer, butler!’

The butler brought some bottles of Munich beer. Ellis
presently sat down at the table with the others, and he
nursed one of the cool bottles between his small hands. His
forehead was sweating. He was sulky, but not in a rage any
longer. At all times he was spiteful and perverse, but his
violent fits of rage were soon over, and were never apologised
for. Quarrels were a regular part of the routine of
Club life. Mr Lackersteen was feeling better and was studying
the illustrations in La Vie Parisienne. It was after nine
now, and the room, scented with the acrid smoke of
Westfield’s cheroot, was stifling hot. Everyone’s shirt stuck
to his back with the first sweat of the day. The invisible
chokra who pulled the punkah rope outside was falling
asleep in the glare.

‘Butler!’ yelled Ellis, and as the butler appeared, ‘go and
wake that bloody chokra up!’

‘Yes, master.’

‘And butler!’

‘Yes, master?’

‘How much ice have we got left?’

‘ ’Bout twenty pounds, master. Will only last today, I
think. I find it very difficult to keep ice cool now.’

‘Don’t talk like that, damn you—“I find it very difficult!”
Have you swallowed a dictionary? “Please, master,
can’t keeping ice cool”—that’s how you ought to talk. We
shall have to sack this fellow if he gets to talk English too
well. I can’t stick servants who talk English. D’you hear,
butler?’

‘Yes. I ought to be there now. I only came in because
of the English mail.’

‘Go on tour myself, I think. Knock up a spot of Travelling
Allowance. I can’t stick my bloody office at this time
of year. Sitting there under the damned punkah, signing
one chit after another. Paper-chewing. God, how I wish
the War was on again!’

‘I’m going out the day after tomorrow,’ Ellis said. ‘Isn’t
that damned padre coming to hold his service this Sunday?
I’ll take care not to be in for that, anyway. Bloody knee-drill.’

‘Next Sunday,’ said Westfield. ‘Promised to be in for it
myself. So’s Macgregor. Bit hard on the poor devil of a
padre, I must say. Only gets here once in six weeks. Might
as well get up a congregation when he does come.’

‘Oh, hell! I’d snivel psalms to oblige the padre, but I can’t
stick the way these damned native Christians come shoving
into our church. A pack of Madrassi servants and Karen
schoolteachers. And then those two yellow-bellies, Francis
and Samuel—they call themselves Christians too. Last time
the padre was here they had the nerve to come up and sit
on the front pews with the white men. Someone ought to
speak to the padre about that. What bloody fools we were
ever to let those missionaries loose in this country! Teaching
bazaar sweepers they’re as good as we are. “Please, sir,
me Christian same like master.” Damned cheek.’

‘How about that for a pair of legs?’ said Mr Lackersteen,
passing La Vie Parisienne across. ‘You know French, Flory;
what’s that mean underneath? Christ, it reminds me of
when I was in Paris, my first leave, before I married. Christ,
I wish I was there again!’

‘Did you hear that one about “There was a young lady
of Woking”?’ Maxwell said. He was rather a silent youth,
but, like other youths, he had an affection for a good
smutty rhyme. He completed the biography of the young
lady of Woking, and there was a laugh. Westfield replied
with the young lady of Ealing who had a peculiar feeling,
and Flory came in with the young curate of Horsham who
always took every precaution. There was more laughter.
Even Ellis thawed and produced several rhymes; Ellis’s
jokes were always genuinely witty, and yet filthy beyond
measure. Everyone cheered up and felt more friendly in
spite of the heat. They had finished the beer and were just
going to call for another drink, when shoes creaked on the
steps outside. A booming voice, which made the floorboards
tingle, was saying jocosely:

‘Yes, most distinctly humorous. I incorporated it in one
of those little articles of mine in Blackwood’s, you know. I
remember, too, when I was stationed at Prome, another
quite—ah—diverting incident which——’

Evidently Mr Macgregor had arrived at the Club. Mr
Lackersteen exclaimed, ‘Hell! My wife’s there,’ and
pushed his empty glass as far away from him as it would
go. Mr Macgregor and Mrs Lackersteen entered the
lounge together.

Mr Macgregor was a large heavy man rather past forty,
with a kindly, puggy face, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles.
His bulky shoulders, and a trick he had of thrusting
his head forward, reminded one curiously of a turtle—the
Burmans, in fact, nicknamed him ‘the tortoise’. He was
dressed in a clean silk suit, which already showed patches
of sweat beneath the armpits. He greeted the others with
a humorous mock-salute, and then planted himself before
the notice-board, beaming, in the attitude of a schoolmaster
twiddling a cane behind his back. The good nature
in his face was quite genuine, and yet there was such a
wilful geniality about him, such a strenuous air of being
off duty and forgetting his official rank, that no one was
ever quite at ease in his presence. His conversation was
evidently modelled on that of some facetious schoolmaster
or clergyman whom he had known in early life. Any long
word, any quotation, any proverbial expression figured in
his mind as a joke, and was introduced with a bumbling
noise like ‘er’ or ‘ah’, to make it clear that there was a joke
coming. Mrs Lackersteen was a woman of about thirty-five,
handsome in a contourless, elongated way, like a
fashion plate. She had a sighing, discontented voice. The
others had all stood up when she entered, and Mrs Lackersteen
sank exhaustedly into the best chair under the
punkah, fanning herself with a slender hand like that of a
newt.

‘Oh dear, this heat, this heat! Mr Macgregor came and
fetched me in his car. So kind of him. Tom, that wretch
of a rickshaw-man is pretending to be ill again. Really, I
think you ought to give him a good thrashing and bring
him to his senses. It’s too terrible to have to walk about in
this sun every day.’

Mrs Lackersteen, unequal to the quarter-mile walk
between her house and the Club, had imported a rickshaw
from Rangoon. Except for bullock-carts and Mr Macgregor’s
car it was the only wheeled vehicle in Kyauktada,
for the whole district did not possess ten miles of road. In
the jungle, rather than leave her husband alone, Mrs
Lackersteen endured all the horrors of dripping tents,
mosquitoes and tinned food; but she made up for it by
complaining over trifles while in headquarters.

‘Really I think the laziness of these servants is getting too
shocking,’ she sighed. ‘Don’t you agree, Mr Macgregor?
We seem to have no authority over the natives nowadays,
with all these dreadful Reforms, and the insolence they
learn from the newspapers. In some ways they are getting
almost as bad as the lower classes at Home.’

‘Oh, hardly as bad as that, I trust. Still, I am afraid there
is no doubt that the democratic spirit is creeping in, even
here.’

‘And such a short time ago, even just before the War,
they were so nice and respectful! The way they salaamed
when you passed them on the road—it was really quite
charming. I remember when we paid our butler only
twelve rupees a month, and really that man loved us like
a dog. And now they are demanding forty and fifty rupees,
and I find that the only way I can even keep a servant is
to pay their wages several months in arrears.’

‘The old type of servant is disappearing,’ agreed Mr
Macgregor. ‘In my young days, when one’s butler was
disrespectful, one sent him along to the jail with a chit
saying “Please give the bearer fifteen lashes.” Ah well, eheu
fugaces! Those days are gone for ever, I am afraid.’

‘Ah, you’re about right there,’ said Westfield in his
gloomy way. ‘This country’ll never be fit to live in again.
British Raj is finished if you ask me. Lost Dominion and
all that. Time we cleared out of it.’

Whereat there was a murmur of agreement from everyone
in the room, even from Flory, notoriously a Bolshie
in his opinions, even from young Maxwell, who had been
barely three years in the country. No Anglo-Indian will
ever deny that India is going to the dogs, or ever has denied
it—for India, like Punch, never was what it was.

Ellis had meanwhile unpinned the offending notice
from behind Mr Macgregor’s back, and he now held it out
to him, saying in his sour way:

‘Here, Macgregor, we’ve read this notice, and we all
think this idea of electing a native to the Club is absolute——’
Ellis was going to have said ‘absolute balls’, but
he remembered Mrs Lackersteen’s presence and checked
himself—‘is absolutely uncalled for. After all, this Club is
a place where we come to enjoy ourselves, and we don’t
want natives poking about in here. We like to think there’s
still one place where we’re free of them. The others all
agree with me absolutely.’

He looked round at the others. ‘Hear, hear!’ said Mr
Lackersteen gruffly. He knew that his wife would guess
that he had been drinking, and he felt that a display of
sound sentiment would excuse him.

Mr Macgregor took the notice with a smile. He saw the
‘B F’ pencilled against his name, and privately he thought
Ellis’s manner very disrespectful, but he turned the matter
off with a joke. He took as great pains to be a good fellow
at the Club as he did to keep up his dignity during office
hours. ‘I gather,’ he said, ‘that our friend Ellis does not
welcome the society of—ah—his Aryan brother?’

‘No, I do not,’ said Ellis tartly. ‘Nor my Mongolian
brother. I don’t like niggers, to put it in one word.’

Mr Macgregor stiffened at the word ‘nigger’, which is
discountenanced in India. He had no prejudice against
Orientals; indeed, he was deeply fond of them. Provided
they were given no freedom he thought them the most
charming people alive. It always pained him to see them
wantonly insulted.

‘Is it quite playing the game,’ he said stiffly, ‘to call these
people niggers—a term they very naturally resent—when
they are obviously nothing of the kind? The Burmese are
Mongolians, the Indians are Aryans or Dravidians, and all
of them are quite distinct——’

‘Oh, rot that!’ said Ellis, who was not at all awed by Mr
Macgregor’s official status. ‘Call them niggers or Aryans
or what you like. What I’m saying is that we don’t want
to see any black hides in this Club. If you put it to the vote
you’ll find we’re against it to a man—unless Flory wants
his dear pal Veraswami,’ he added.

Mr Macgregor pursed his lips whimsically. He was in
an awkward position, for the idea of electing a native
member was not his own, but had been passed on to him
by the Commissioner. However, he disliked making
excuses, so he said in a more conciliatory tone:

‘Shall we postpone discussing it till the next general
meeting? In the meantime we can give it our mature
consideration. And now,’ he added, moving towards the
table, ‘who will join me in a little—ah—liquid refreshment?’

The butler was called and the ‘liquid refreshment’
ordered. It was hotter than ever now, and everyone was
thirsty. Mr Lackersteen was on the point of ordering a
drink when he caught his wife’s eye, shrank up and said
sulkily ‘No.’ He sat with his hands on his knees, with a
rather pathetic expression, watching Mrs Lackersteen
swallow a glass of lemonade with gin in it. Mr Macgregor,
though he signed the chit for drinks, drank plain lemonade.
Alone of the Europeans in Kyauktada, he kept the rule of
not drinking before sunset.

‘It’s all very well,’ grumbled Ellis, with his forearms on
the table, fidgeting with his glass. The dispute with Mr
Macgregor had made him restless again. ‘It’s all very well,
but I stick to what I said. No natives in this Club! It’s by
constantly giving way over small things like that that
we’ve ruined the Empire. This country’s only rotten with
sedition because we’ve been too soft with them. The only
possible policy is to treat ’em like the dirt they are. This
is a critical moment, and we want every bit of prestige we
can get. We’ve got to hang together and say, “We are the
masters, and you beggars—” ’ Ellis pressed his small thumb
down as though flattening a grub—‘ “you beggars keep
your place!” ’

‘Hopeless, old chap,’ said Westfield. ‘Quite hopeless.
What can you do with all this red tape tying your hands?
Beggars of natives know the law better than we do. Insult
you to your face and then run you in the moment you hit
’em. Can’t do anything unless you put your foot down
firmly. And how can you, if they haven’t the guts to show
fight?’

‘Our burra sahib at Mandalay always said,’ put in Mrs
Lackersteen, ‘that in the end we shall simply leave India.
Young men will not come out here any longer to work
all their lives for insults and ingratitude. We shall just go.
When the natives come to us begging us to stay, we shall
say, “No, you have had your chance, you wouldn’t take
it. Very well, we shall leave you to govern yourselves.”
And then, what a lesson that will teach them!’

‘It’s all this law and order that’s done for us,’ said
Westfield gloomily. The ruin of the Indian Empire
through too much legality was a recurrent theme with
Westfield. According to him, nothing save a full-sized
rebellion, and the consequent reign of martial law, could
save the Empire from decay. ‘All this paper-chewing and
chit-passing. Office babus are the real rulers of this country
now. Our number’s up. Best thing we can do is to shut
up shop and let ’em stew in their own juice.’

‘I don’t agree, I simply don’t agree,’ Ellis said. ‘We could
put things right in a month if we chose. It only needs a
pennyworth of pluck. Look at Amritsar. Look how they
caved in after that. Dyer knew the stuff to give them. Poor
old Dyer! That was a dirty job. Those cowards in England
have got something to answer for.’

There was a kind of sigh from the others, the same sigh
that a gathering of Roman Catholics will give at the
mention of Bloody Mary. Even Mr Macgregor, who
detested bloodshed and martial law, shook his head at the
name of Dyer.

‘Ah, poor man! Sacrificed to the Paget MPs. Well,
perhaps they will discover their mistake when it is too late.’

‘My old governor used to tell a story about that,’ said
Westfield. ‘There was an old havildar in a native regiment—someone
asked him what’d happen if the British left
India. The old chap said——’

Flory pushed back his chair and stood up. It must not,
it could not—no, it simply should not go on any longer!
He must get out of this room quickly, before something
happened inside his head and he began to smash the furniture
and throw bottles at the pictures. Dull boozing witless
porkers! Was it possible that they could go on week after
week, year after year, repeating word for word the same
evil-minded drivel, like a parody of a fifth-rate story in
Blackwood’s? Would none of them ever think of anything
new to say? Oh, what a place, what people! What a
civilisation is this of ours—this godless civilisation founded
on whisky, Blackwood’s and the ‘Bonzo’ pictures! God have
mercy on us, for all of us are part of it.

Flory did not say any of this, and he was at some pains
not to show it in his face. He was standing by his chair, a
little sidelong to the others, with the half-smile of a man
who is never sure of his popularity.

‘I’m afraid I shall have to be off,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some
things to see to before breakfast, unfortunately.’

‘Stay and have another spot, old man,’ said Westfield.
‘Morning’s young. Have a gin. Give you an appetite.’

‘Exit Booker Washington, the niggers’ pal,’ said Ellis as
Flory disappeared. Ellis could always be counted on to say
something disagreeable about anyone who had just left the
room. ‘Gone to see Very-slimy, I suppose. Or else sloped
off to avoid paying a round of drinks.’

‘Oh, a very good fellow, of course,’ said Mr Macgregor.
Every European in India is ex officio, or rather ex colore,
a good fellow, until he has done something quite outrageous.
It is an honorary rank.

‘He’s a bit too Bolshie for my taste. I can’t bear a fellow
who pals up with the natives. I shouldn’t wonder if he’s
got a lick of the tarbrush himself. It might explain that
black mark on his face. Piebald. And he looks like a yellow-belly,
with that black hair, and skin the colour of a lemon.’

There was some desultory scandal about Flory, but not
much, because Mr Macgregor did not like scandal. The
Europeans stayed in the Club long enough for one more
round of drinks. Mr Macgregor told his anecdote about
Prome, which could be produced in almost any context.
And then the conversation veered back to the old, never-palling
subject—the insolence of the natives, the supineness
of the Government, the dear dead days when the British
Raj was the British Raj and please give the bearer fifteen
lashes. This topic was never let alone for long, partly
because of Ellis’s obsession. Besides, you could forgive the
Europeans a great deal of their bitterness. Living and working
among Orientals would try the temper of a saint. And
all of them, the officials particularly, knew what it was to
be baited and insulted. Almost every day, when Westfield
or Mr Macgregor or even Maxwell went down the street,
the High School boys, with their young, yellow faces—faces
smooth as gold coins, full of that maddening contempt
that sits so naturally on the Mongolian face—sneered
at them as they went past, sometimes hooted
after them with hyena-like laughter. The life of the Anglo-Indian
officials is not all jam. In comfortless camps, in
sweltering offices, in gloomy dak bungalows smelling of
dust and earth-oil, they earn, perhaps, the right to be a little
disagreeable.

It was getting on for ten now, and hot beyond bearing.
Flat, clear drops of sweat gathered on everyone’s face, and
on the men’s bare forearms. A damp patch was growing
larger and larger in the back of Mr Macgregor’s silk coat.
The glare outside seemed to soak somehow through the
green-chicked windows, making one’s eyes ache and filling
one’s head with stuffiness. Everyone thought with malaise
of his stodgy breakfast, and of the long, deadly hours that
were coming. Mr Macgregor stood up with a sigh and
adjusted his spectacles, which had slipped down his sweating
nose.

‘Alas that such a festive gathering should end,’ he said. ‘I
must get home to breakfast. The cares of Empire. Is anybody
coming my way? My man is waiting with the car.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Mrs Lackersteen; ‘if you’d take
Tom and me. What a relief not to have to walk in this
heat!’

The others stood up. Westfield stretched his arms and
yawned through his nose. ‘Better get a move on, I suppose.
Go to sleep if I sit here any longer. Think of stewing in that
office all day! Baskets of papers. Oh Lord!’

‘Don’t forget tennis this evening, everyone,’ said Ellis.
‘Maxwell, you lazy devil, don’t you skulk out of it again.
Down here with your racquet at four-thirty sharp.’

‘Après vous, madame,’ said Mr Macgregor gallantly, at
the door.

‘Lead on, Macduff,’ said Westfield.

They went out into the glaring white sunlight. The heat
rolled from the earth like the breath of an oven. The
flowers, oppressive to the eyes, blazed with not a petal
stirring, in a debauch of sun. The glare sent a weariness
through one’s bones. There was something horrible in
it—horrible to think of that blue, blinding sky, stretching
on and on over Burma and India, over Siam, Cambodia,
China, cloudless and interminable. The plates of Mr Macgregor’s
waiting car were too hot to touch. The evil time
of day was beginning, the time, as the Burmese say, ‘when
feet are silent.’ Hardly a living creature stirred, except men,
and the black columns of ants, stimulated by the heat,
which marched ribbon-like across the path, and the tailless
vultures which soared on the currents of the air.

III

Flory turned to the left outside the Club gate and started
down the bazaar road, under the shade of the peepul trees.
A hundred yards away there was a swirl of music, where
a squad of Military Policemen, lank Indians in greenish
khaki, were marching back to their lines with a Gurkha
boy playing the bagpipes ahead of them. Flory was going
to see Dr Veraswami. The doctor’s house was a long
bungalow of earth-oiled wood, standing on piles, with a
large unkempt garden which adjoined that of the Club.
The back of the house was towards the road, for it faced
the hospital, which lay between it and the river.

As Flory entered the compound there was a frightened
squawk of women and a scurrying within the house.
Evidently he had narrowly missed seeing the doctor’s wife.
He went round to the front of the house and called up to
the veranda:

‘Doctor! Are you busy? May I come up?’

The doctor, a little black and white figure, popped from
within the house like a jack-in-the-box. He hurried to the
veranda rail, exclaiming effusively:

‘If you may come up! Of course, of course, come up this
instant! Ah, Mr Flory, how very delightful to see you!
Come up, come up. What drink will you have? I have
whisky, beer, vermouth and other European liquors. Ah,
my dear friend, how I have been pining for some cultured
conversation!’

The doctor was a small, black, plump man with fuzzy
hair and round, credulous eyes. He wore steel-rimmed
spectacles, and he was dressed in a badly-fitting white drill
suit, with trousers bagging concertina-like over clumsy
black boots. His voice was eager and bubbling with a
hissing of the s’s. As Flory came up the steps the doctor
popped back to the end of the veranda and rummaged in
a big tin ice-chest, rapidly pulling out bottles of all descriptions.
The veranda was wide and dark, with low eaves
from which baskets of fern hung, making it seem like a
cave behind a waterfall of sunlight. It was furnished with
long, cane-bottomed chairs made in the jail, and at one end
there was a bookcase containing a rather unappetising little
library, mainly books of essays, of the Emerson-Carlyle-Stevenson
type. The doctor, a great reader, liked his books
to have what he called a ‘moral meaning’.

‘Well, doctor,’ said Flory—the doctor had meanwhile
thrust him into a long chair, pulled out the leg-rests so that
he could lie down, and put cigarettes and beer within reach.
‘Well, doctor, and how are things? How’s the British
Empire? Sick of the palsy as usual?’

‘Aha, Mr Flory, she iss very low, very low! Grave
complications setting in. Septicaemia, peritonitis and paralysis
of the ganglia. We shall have to call in the specialists,
I fear. Aha!’

It was a joke between the two men to pretend that the
British Empire was an aged female patient of the doctor’s.
The doctor had enjoyed this joke for two years without
growing tired of it.

‘Ah, doctor,’ said Flory, supine in the long chair, ‘what
a joy to be here after that bloody Club. When I come to
your house I feel like a Nonconformist minister dodging
up to town and going home with a tart. Such a glorious
holiday from them’—he motioned with one heel in the
direction of the Club—‘from my beloved fellow Empire-builders.
British prestige, the white man’s burden, the
pukka sahib sans peur et sans reproche—you know. Such a
relief to be out of the stink of it for a little while.’

‘My friend, my friend, now come, come, please! That
iss outrageous. You must not say such things of honourable
English gentlemen!’

‘You don’t have to listen to the honourable gentlemen
talking, doctor. I stood it as long as I could this morning.
Ellis with his “dirty nigger”, Westfield with his jokes,
Macgregor with his Latin tags and please give the bearer
fifteen lashes. But when they got on to that story about the
old havildar—you know, the dear old havildar who said
that if the British left India there wouldn’t be a rupee or
a virgin between—you know; well, I couldn’t stand it any
longer. It’s time that old havildar was put on the retired
list. He’s been saying the same thing ever since the Jubilee
in ’eighty-seven.’

The doctor grew agitated, as he always did when Flory
criticised the Club members. He was standing with his
plump white-clad behind balanced against the veranda rail,
and sometimes gesticulating. When searching for a word
he would nip his black thumb and forefinger together, as
though to capture an idea floating in the air.

‘But truly, truly, Mr Flory, you must not speak so! Why
iss it that always you are abusing the pukka sahibs, ass you
call them? They are the salt of the earth. Consider the great
things they have done—consider the great administrators
who have made British India what it iss. Consider Clive,
Warren Hastings, Dalhousie, Curzon. They were such
men—I quote your immortal Shakespeare—ass, take them
for all in all, we shall not look upon their like again!’

‘Well, do you want to look upon their like again? I
don’t.’

‘And consider how noble a type iss the English gentleman!
Their glorious loyalty to one another! The public-school
spirit! Even those of them whose manner iss unfortunate—some
Englishmen are arrogant, I concede—have
the great, sterling qualities that we Orientals lack.
Beneath their rough exterior, their hearts are of gold.’

‘Of gilt, shall we say? There’s a kind of spurious good-fellowship
between the English and this country. It’s a
tradition to booze together and swap meals and pretend to
be friends, though we all hate each other like poison.
Hanging together, we call it. It’s a political necessity. Of
course drink is what keeps the machine going. We should
all go mad and kill one another in a week if it weren’t for
that. There’s a subject for one of your uplift essayists,
doctor. Booze as the cement of empire.’

The doctor shook his head. ‘Really, Mr Flory, I know
not what it iss that hass made you so cynical. It iss so most
unsuitable! You—an English gentleman of high gifts and
character—to be uttering seditious opinions that are
worthy of the Burmese Patriot!’

‘Seditious?’ Flory said. ‘I’m not seditious. I don’t want
the Burmans to drive us out of this country. God forbid!
I’m here to make money, like everyone else. All I object
to is the slimy white man’s burden humbug. The pukka
sahib pose. It’s so boring. Even those bloody fools at the
Club might be better company if we weren’t all of us living
a lie the whole time.’

‘But, my dear friend, what lie are you living?’

‘Why, of course, the lie that we’re here to uplift our poor
black brothers instead of to rob them. I suppose it’s a
natural enough lie. But it corrupts us, it corrupts us in ways
you can’t imagine. There’s an everlasting sense of being a
sneak and a liar that torments us and drives us to justify
ourselves night and day. It’s at the bottom of half our
beastliness to the natives. We Anglo-Indians could be
almost bearable if we’d only admit that we’re thieves and
go on thieving without any humbug.’

The doctor, very pleased, nipped his thumb and forefinger
together. ‘The weakness of your argument, my dear
friend,’ he said, beaming at his own irony, ‘the weakness
appears to be, that you are not thieves.’

‘Now, my dear doctor——’

Flory sat up in the long chair, partly because his prickly
heat had just stabbed him in the back like a thousand
needles, partly because his favourite argument with the
doctor was about to begin. This argument, vaguely political
in nature, took place as often as the two men met. It
was a topsy-turvy affair, for the Englishman was bitterly
anti-English and the Indian fanatically loyal. Dr Veraswami
had a passionate admiration for the English, which
a thousand snubs from Englishmen had not shaken. He
would maintain with positive eagerness that he, as an
Indian, belonged to an inferior and degenerate race. His
faith in British justice was so great that even when, at the
jail, he had to superintend a flogging or a hanging, and
would come home with his black face faded grey and dose
himself with whisky, his zeal did not falter. Flory’s seditious
opinions shocked him, but they also gave him a certain
shuddering pleasure, such as a pious believer will take in
hearing the Lord’s Prayer repeated backwards.

‘My dear doctor,’ said Flory, ‘how can you make out
that we are in this country for any purpose except to steal?
It’s so simple. The official holds the Burman down while
the businessman goes through his pockets. Do you suppose
my firm, for instance, could get its timber contracts if the
country weren’t in the hands of the British? Or the other
timber firms, or the oil companies, or the miners and
planters and traders? How could the Rice Ring go on
skinning the unfortunate peasant if it hadn’t the Government
behind it? The British Empire is simply a device for
giving trade monopolies to the English—or rather to gangs
of Jews and Scotchmen.’

‘My friend, it iss pathetic to me to hear you talk so. It
iss truly pathetic. You say you are here to trade? Of course
you are. Could the Burmese trade for themselves? Can
they make machinery, ships, railways, roads? They are
helpless without you. What would happen to the Burmese
forests if the English were not here? They would be sold
immediately to the Japanese, who would gut them and
ruin them. Instead of which, in your hands, actually they
are improved. And while your businessmen develop the
resources of our country, your officials are civilising us,
elevating us to their level, from pure public spirit. It iss a
magnificent record of self-sacrifice.’

‘Bosh, my dear doctor. We teach the young men to
drink whisky and play football, I admit, but precious little
else. Look at our schools—factories for cheap clerks. We’ve
never taught a single useful manual trade to the Indians.
We daren’t; frightened of the competition in industry.
We’ve even crushed various industries. Where are the
Indian muslins now? Back in the ’forties or thereabouts
they were building sea-going ships in India, and manning
them as well. Now you couldn’t build a seaworthy fishing
boat there. In the eighteenth century the Indians cast guns
that were at any rate up to the European standard. Now,
after we’ve been in India a hundred and fifty years, you
can’t make so much as a brass cartridge case in the whole
continent. The only Eastern races that have developed at
all quickly are the independent ones. I won’t instance Japan,
but take the case of Siam—’

The doctor waved his hand excitedly. He always interrupted
the argument at this point (for as a rule it followed
the same course, almost word for word), finding that the
case of Siam hampered him.

‘My friend, my friend, you are forgetting the Oriental
character. How iss it possible to have developed us, with
our apathy and superstition? At least you have brought to
us law and order. The unswerving British Justice and the
Pax Britannica.’

‘Pox Britannica, doctor, Pox Britannica is its proper
name. And in any case, whom is it pax for? The moneylender
and the lawyer. Of course we keep the peace in
India, in our own interest, but what does all this law and
order business boil down to? More banks and more prisons—that’s
all it means.’

‘What monstrous misrepresentations!’ cried the doctor.
‘Are not prissons necessary? And have you brought us
nothing but prissons? Consider Burma in the days of
Thibaw, with dirt and torture and ignorance, and then
look around you. Look merely out of this veranda—look
at that hospital, and over to the right at that school and that
police station. Look at the whole uprush of modern progress!’

‘Of course I don’t deny,’ Flory said, ‘that we modernise
this country in certain ways. We can’t help doing so. In
fact, before we’ve finished we’ll have wrecked the whole
Burmese national culture. But we’re not civilising them,
we’re only rubbing our dirt onto them. Where’s it going
to lead, this uprush of modern progress, as you call it? Just
to our own dear old swinery of gramophones and billycock
hats. Sometimes I think that in two hundred years all
this—’ he waved a foot towards the horizon—‘all this will
be gone—forests, villages, monasteries, pagodas all vanished.
And instead, pink villas fifty yards apart; all over
those hills, as far as you can see, villa after villa, with all the
gramophones playing the same tune. And all the forests
shaved flat—chewed into wood-pulp for the News of the
World, or sawn up into gramophone cases. But the trees
avenge themselves, as the old chap says in The Wild Duck.
You’ve read Ibsen, of course?’

‘Ah, no, Mr Flory, alas! That mighty master-mind, your
inspired Bernard Shaw hass called him. It iss a pleasure to
come. But, my friend, what you do not see iss that your
civilisation at its very worst iss for us an advance. Gramophones,
billycock hats, the News of the World—all iss better
than the horrible sloth of the Oriental. I see the British,
even the least inspired of them, ass—— ass——’ the doctor
searched for a phrase, and found one that probably came
from Stevenson—‘ass torchbearers upon the path of progress.’

‘I don’t. I see them as a kind of up-to-date, hygienic, self-satisfied
louse. Creeping round the world building prisons.
They build a prison and call it progress,’ he added rather
regretfully—for the doctor would not recognise the allusion.

‘My friend, possitively you are harping upon the subject
of prissons! Consider that there are also other achievements
of your countrymen. They construct roads, they irrigate
deserts, they conquer famines, they build schools, they set
up hospitals, they combat plague, cholera, leprosy, smallpox,
venereal disease——’

‘Having brought it themselves,’ put in Flory.

‘No, sir!’ returned the doctor, eager to claim this distinction
for his own countrymen. ‘No, sir, it wass the Indians
who introduced venereal disease into this country. The
Indians introduce diseases, and the English cure them.
There iss the answer to all your pessimism and seditiousness.’

‘Well, doctor, we shall never agree. The fact is that you
like all this modern progress business, whereas I’d rather see
things a little bit septic. Burma in the days of Thibaw
would have suited me better, I think. And, as I said before,
if we are a civilising influence it’s only in order to grab on
a larger scale. We should chuck it quickly enough if it
didn’t pay.’

‘My friend, you do not think that. If truly you disapproved
of the British Empire, you would not be talking
of it privately here. You would be proclaiming it from the
housetops. I know your character, Mr Flory, better than
you know it yourself.’

‘Sorry, doctor; I don’t go in for proclaiming from the
housetops. I haven’t the guts. I “counsel ignoble ease”, like
old Belial in Paradise Lost. It’s safer. You’ve got to be a
pukka sahib or die, in this country. In fifteen years I’ve
never talked honestly to anyone except you. My talks here
are a safety valve; a little Black Mass on the sly, if you
understand me.’

At this moment there was a desolate wailing noise
outside. Old Mattu, the Hindu durwan who looked after
the European church, was standing in the sunlight below
the veranda. He was an old fever-stricken creature, more
like a grasshopper than a human being, and dressed in a few
square inches of dingy rag. He lived near the church in a
hut made of flattened kerosene tins, from which he would
sometimes hurry forth at the appearance of a European, to
salaam deeply and wail something about his talab, which
was eighteen rupees a month. Looking piteously up at the
veranda, he massaged the earth-coloured skin of his belly
with one hand, and with the other made the motion of
putting food into his mouth. The doctor felt in his pocket
and dropped a four-anna piece over the veranda rail. He
was notorious for his soft-heartedness, and all the beggars
in Kyauktada made him their target.

‘Behold there the degeneracy of the East,’ said the
doctor, pointing to Mattu, who was doubling himself up
like a caterpillar and uttering grateful whines. ‘Look at the
wretchedness of hiss limbs. The calves of hiss legs are not
so thick ass an Englishman’s wrists. Look at hiss abjectness
and servility. Look at hiss ignorance—such ignorance ass
iss not known in Europe outside a home for mental defectives.
Once I asked Mattu to tell me hiss age. “Sahib,” he
said, “I believe that I am ten years old.” How can you
pretend, Mr Flory, that you are not the natural superior of
such creatures?’

‘Poor old Mattu, the uprush of modern progress seems
to have missed him somehow,’ Flory said, throwing
another four-anna piece over the rail. ‘Go on, Mattu, spend
that on booze. Be as degenerate as you can. It all postpones
Utopia.’

‘Aha, Mr Flory, sometimes I think that all you say iss
but to—what iss the expression?—pull my leg. The
English sense of humour. We Orientals have no humour,
ass iss well known.’

‘Lucky devils. It’s been the ruin of us, our bloody sense
of humour.’ He yawned with his hands behind his head.
Mattu had shambled away after further grateful noises. ‘I
suppose I ought to be going before this cursed sun gets too
high. The heat’s going to be devilish this year, I feel it in
my bones. Well, doctor, we’ve been arguing so much that
I haven’t asked for your news. I only got in from the jungle
yesterday. I ought to go back the day after tomorrow—don’t
know whether I shall. Has anything been happening
in Kyauktada? Any scandals?’

The doctor looked suddenly serious. He had taken off
his spectacles, and his face, with dark liquid eyes recalled
that of a black retriever dog. He looked away, and spoke
in a slightly more hesitant tone than before.

‘The fact iss, my friend, there iss a most unpleasant
business afoot. You will perhaps laugh—it sounds nothing—but
I am in serious trouble. Or rather, I am in danger
of trouble. It iss an underground business. You Europeans
will never hear of it directly. In this place’—he waved a
hand towards the bazaar—‘there iss perpetual conspiracies
and plottings of which you do not hear. But to us they
mean much.’

‘What’s been happening, then?’

‘It iss this. An intrigue iss brewing against me. A most
serious intrigue which iss intended to blacken my character
and ruin my official career. Ass an Englishman you will not
understand these things. I have incurred the enmity of a
man you probably do not know, U Po Kyin, the Sub-divisional
Magistrate. He iss a most dangerous man. The
damage that he can do to me iss incalculable.’

‘U Po Kyin? Which one is that?’

‘The great fat man with many teeth. Hiss house iss down
the road there, a hundred yards away.’

‘Oh, that fat scoundrel? I know him well.’

‘No, no, my friend, no, no!’ exclaimed the doctor quite
eagerly; ‘it cannot be that you know him. Only an Oriental
could know him. You, an English gentleman, cannot sink
your mind to the depth of such ass U Po Kyin. He iss more
than a scoundrel, he iss—what shall I say? Words fail me.
He recalls to me a crocodile in human shape. He hass the
cunning of the crocodile, its cruelty, its bestiality. If you
knew the record of that man! The outrages he hass committed!
The extortions, the briberies! The girls he hass
ruined, raping them before the very eyes of their mothers!
Ah, an English gentleman cannot imagine such a character.
And this iss the man who hass taken hiss oath to ruin
me.’

‘I’ve heard a good deal about U Po Kyin from various
sources,’ Flory said. ‘He seems a fair sample of a Burmese
magistrate. A Burman told me that during the War U Po
Kyin was at work recruiting, and he raised a battalion from
his own illegitimate sons. Is that true?’

‘It could hardly be so,’ said the doctor, ‘for they would
not have been old enough. But off hiss villainy there iss no
doubt. And now he iss determined upon ruining me. In
the first place he hates me because I know too much about
him; and besides, he iss the enemy of any reasonably honest
man. He will proceed—such iss the practice of such men—by
calumny. He will spread reports about me—reports of
the most appalling and untrue descriptions. Already he iss
beginning them.’

‘But would anyone believe a fellow like that against
you? He’s only a low-down magistrate. You’re a high
official.’

‘Ah, Mr Flory, you do not understand Oriental cunning.
U Po Kyin hass ruined higher officials than I. He will
know ways to make himself believed. And therefore—ah,
it iss a difficult business!’

The doctor took a step or two up and down the veranda,
polishing his glasses with his handkerchief. It was clear that
there was something more which delicacy prevented him
from saying. For a moment his manner was so troubled
that Flory would have liked to ask whether he could not
help in some way, but he did not, for he knew the uselessness
of interfering in Oriental quarrels. No European ever
gets to the bottom of these quarrels; there is always something
impervious to the European mind, a conspiracy
behind the conspiracy, a plot within the plot. Besides, to
keep out of ‘native’ quarrels is one of the Ten Precepts of
the pukka sahib. He said doubtfully:

‘What is a difficult business?’

‘It iss, if only—ah, my friend, you will laugh at me, I
fear. But it iss this: if only I were a member of your
European Club! If only! How different would my position
be!’

‘The Club? Why? How would that help you?’

‘My friend, in these matters prestige iss everything. It iss
not that U Po Kyin will attack me openly; he would never
dare; it iss that he will libel me and backbite me. And
whether he iss believed or not depends entirely upon my
standing with the Europeans. It iss so that things happen
in India. If our prestige iss good, we rise; if bad, we fall.
A nod and a wink will accomplish more than a thousand
official reports. And you do not know what prestige it
gives to an Indian to be a member of the European Club.
In the Club, practically he iss a European. No calumny can
touch him. A Club member iss sacrosanct.’

Flory looked away over the veranda rail. He had got up
as though to go. It always made him ashamed and uncomfortable
when it had to be admitted between them that
the doctor, because of his black skin, could not be received
in the Club. It is a disagreeable thing when one’s close
friend is not one’s social equal; but it is a thing native to
the very air of India.

‘They might elect you at the next general meeting,’ he
said. ‘I don’t say they will, but it’s not impossible.’

‘I trust, Mr Flory, that you do not think I am asking you
to propose me for the Club? Heaven forbid! I know that
that iss impossible for you. Simply I wass remarking that
if I were a member of the Club, I should be forthwith
invulnerable.’

Flory cocked his Terai hat loosely on his head and stirred
Flo up with his stick. She was asleep under the chair. Flory
felt very uncomfortable. He knew that in all probability, if
he had the courage to face a few rows with Ellis, he could
secure Dr Veraswami’s election to the Club. And the
doctor, after all, was his friend, indeed, almost the sole
friend he had in Burma. They had talked and argued
together a hundred times, the doctor had dined at his
house, he had even proposed to introduce Flory to his
wife, but she, a pious Hindu, had refused with horror.
They had made shooting trips together—the doctor,
equipped with bandoliers and hunting knives, panting up
hillsides slippery with bamboo leaves and blazing his gun
at nothing. In common decency it was his duty to support
the doctor. But he knew also that the doctor would never
ask for any support, and that there would be an ugly row
before an Oriental was got into the Club. No, he could not
face that row! It was not worth it. He said:

‘To tell you the truth, there’s been talk about this
already. They were discussing it this morning, and that
little beast Ellis was preaching his usual “dirty nigger”
sermon. Macgregor has suggested electing one native
member. He’s had orders to do so, I imagine.’

‘Yes, I heard that. We hear all these things. It wass that
that put the idea into my head.’

‘It’s to come up at the general meeting in June. I don’t
know what’ll happen—it depends on Macgregor, I think.
I’ll give you my vote, but I can’t do more than that. I’m
sorry, but I simply can’t. You don’t know the row there’ll
be. Very likely they will elect you, but they’ll do it as an
unpleasant duty, under protest. They’ve made a perfect
fetish of keeping this Club all-white, as they call it.’

‘Of course, of course, my friend! I understand perfectly.
Heaven forbid that you should get into trouble with your
European friends on my behalf. Please, please, never to
embroil yourself! The mere fact that you are known to
be my friend benefits me more than you can imagine.
Prestige, Mr Flory, iss like a barometer. Every time
you are seen to enter my house the mercury rises half a
degree.’

‘Well, we must try and keep it at “Set Fair”. That’s
about all I can do for you, I’m afraid.’

‘Even that iss much, my friend. And for that, there iss
another thing of which I would warn you, though you will
laugh, I fear. It iss that you yourself should beware of U
Po Kyin. Beware of the crocodile! For sure he will strike
at you when he knows that you are befriending me.’

‘All right, doctor, I’ll beware of the crocodile. I don’t
fancy he can do me much harm, though.’

‘At least he will try. I know him. It will be hiss policy
to detach my friends from me. Possibly he would even dare
to spread hiss libels about you also.’

‘About me? Good gracious, no one would believe anything
against me. Civis Romanus sum. I’m an Englishman—quite
above suspicion.’

‘Nevertheless, beware of hiss calumnies, my friend. Do
not underrate him. He will know how to strike at you. He
iss a crocodile. And like the crocodile’—the doctor nipped
his thumb and finger impressively; his images became
mixed sometimes—‘like the crocodile, he strikes always at
the weakest spot!’

‘Do crocodiles always strike at the weakest spot, doctor?’

Both men laughed. They were intimate enough to
laugh over the doctor’s queer English occasionally. Perhaps,
at the bottom of his heart, the doctor was a little
disappointed that Flory had not promised to propose him
for the Club, but he would have perished rather than say
so. And Flory was glad to drop the subject, an uncomfortable
one which he wished had never been raised.

‘Well, I really must be going, doctor. Good-bye in case
I don’t see you again. I hope it’ll be all right at the general
meeting. Macgregor’s not a bad old stick. I dare say he’ll
insist on their electing you.’

‘Let us hope so, my friend. With that I can defy a
hundred U Po Kyins. A thousand! Good-bye, my friend,
good-bye.’

Then Flory settled his Terai hat on his head and went
home across the glaring maidan, to his breakfast, for which
the long morning of drinking, smoking and talking had
left him no appetite.

IV

Flory lay asleep, naked except for black Shan trousers,
upon his sweat-damp bed. He had been idling all day. He
spent approximately three weeks of every month in camp,
coming into Kyauktada for a few days at a time, chiefly
in order to idle, for he had very little clerical work to do.

The bedroom was a large square room with white
plaster walls, open doorways and no ceiling, but only
rafters in which sparrows nested. There was no furniture
except the big four-poster bed, with its furled mosquito net
like a canopy, and a wicker table and chair and a small
mirror; also some rough bookshelves containing several
hundred books, all mildewed by many rainy seasons and
riddled by silver fish. A tuktoo clung to the wall, flat and
motionless like a heraldic dragon. Beyond the veranda
eaves the light rained down like glistening white oil. Some
doves in a bamboo thicket kept up a dull droning noise,
curiously appropriate to the heat—a sleepy sound, but with
the sleepiness of chloroform rather than a lullaby.

Down at Mr Macgregor’s bungalow, two hundred
yards away, a durwan, like a living clock, hammered four
strokes on a section of iron rail. Ko S’la, Flory’s servant,
awakened by the sound, went into the cookhouse, blew up
the embers of the wood fire and boiled the kettle for tea.
Then he put on his pink gaungbaung and muslin ingyi and
brought the tea-tray to his master’s bedside.

Ko S’la (his real name was Maung San Hla; Ko S’la was
an abbreviation) was a short, square-shouldered, rustic-looking
Burman with a very dark skin and a harassed
expression. He wore a black moustache which curved
downwards round his mouth, but like most Burmans he
was quite beardless. He had been Flory’s servant since his
first day in Burma. The two men were within a month of
one another’s age. They had been boys together, had
tramped side by side after snipe and duck, sat together in
machans waiting for tigers that never came, shared the
discomforts of a thousand camps and marches; and Ko S’la
had pimped for Flory and borrowed money for him from
the Chinese moneylenders, carried him to bed when he
was drunk, tended him through bouts of fever. In Ko S’la’s
eyes Flory, because a bachelor, was a boy still; whereas Ko
S’la had married, begotten five children, married again and
become one of the obscure martyrs of bigamy. Like all
bachelors’ servants Ko S’la was lazy and dirty, and yet he
was devoted to Flory. He would never let anyone else serve
Flory at table, or carry his gun or hold his pony’s head
while he mounted. On the march, if they came to a stream,
he would carry Flory across on his back. He was inclined
to pity Flory, partly because he thought him childish and
easily deceived, and partly because of the birthmark, which
he considered a dreadful thing.

Ko S’la put the tea-tray down on the table very quietly,
and then went round to the end of the bed and tickled
Flory’s toes. He knew by experience that this was the only
way of waking Flory without putting him in a bad temper.
Flory rolled over, swore, and pressed his forehead into the
pillow.

‘Four o’clock has struck, most holy god,’ Ko S’la said.
‘I have brought two teacups, because the woman said that
she was coming.’

The woman was Ma Hla May, Flory’s mistress. Ko S’la
always called her the woman, to show his disapproval—not
that he disapproved of Flory for keeping a mistress, but he
was jealous of Ma Hla May’s influence in the house.

‘Will the holy one play tinnis this evening?’ Ko S’la
asked.

‘No, it’s too hot,’ said Flory in English. ‘I don’t want
anything to eat. Take this muck away and bring some
whisky.’

Ko S’la understood English very well, though he could
not speak it. He brought a bottle of whisky, and also Flory’s
tennis racquet, which he laid in a meaning manner against
the wall opposite the bed. Tennis, according to his notions,
was a mysterious ritual incumbent on all Englishmen, and
he did not like to see his master idling in the evenings.

Flory pushed away in disgust the toast and butter that
Ko S’la had brought, but he mixed some whisky in a cup
of tea and felt better after drinking it. He had slept since
noon, and his head and all his bones ached, and there was
a taste like burnt paper in his mouth. It was years since he
had enjoyed a meal. All European food in Burma is more
or less disgusting—the bread is spongy stuff leavened with
palm-toddy and tasting like a penny bun gone wrong, the
butter comes out of a tin, and so does the milk, unless it
is the grey watery catlap of the dudh-wallah. As Ko S’la left
the room there was a scraping of sandals outside, and a
Burmese girl’s high-pitched voice said, ‘Is my master
awake?’

‘Come in,’ said Flory rather bad-temperedly.

Ma Hla May came in kicking off red-lacquered sandals
in the doorway. She was allowed to come to tea, as a special
privilege, but not to other meals, nor to wear her sandals
in her master’s presence.

Ma Hla May was a woman of twenty-two or -three,
and perhaps five feet tall. She was dressed in a longyi of pale
blue embroidered Chinese satin, and a starched white
muslin ingyi on which several gold lockets hung. Her hair
was coiled in a tight black cylinder like ebony, and decorated
with jasmine flowers. Her tiny, straight, slender body was
as contourless as a bas-relief carved upon a tree. She was
like a doll, with her oval, still face the colour of new
copper, and her narrow eyes; an outlandish doll and yet
a grotesquely beautiful one. A scent of sandalwood and
coco-nut oil came into the room with her.

Ma Hla May came across to the bed, sat down on the
edge and put her arms rather abruptly round Flory. She
smelled at his cheek with her flat nose, in the Burmese
fashion.

‘Why did my master not send for me this afternoon?’
she said.

‘I was sleeping. It is too hot for that kind of thing.’

‘So you would rather sleep alone than with Ma Hla
May? How ugly you must think me, then! Am I ugly,
master?’

‘Go away,’ he said, pushing her back. ‘I don’t want you
at this time of day.’

‘At least touch me with your lips, then.’ (There is no
Burmese word for to kiss.) ‘All white men do that to their
women.’

‘Why is it that nowadays you never want to make love
to me? Ah, two years ago it was so different! You loved
me in those days. You gave me presents of gold bangles
and silk longyis from Mandalay. And now look’—Ma Hla
May held out one tiny muslin-clad arm—‘not a single
bangle. Last month I had thirty, and now all of them are
pawned. How can I go to the bazaar without my bangles,
and wearing the same longyi over and over again? I am
ashamed before the other women.’

‘Is it my fault if you pawn your bangles?’

‘Two years ago you would have redeemed them for me.
Ah, you do not love Ma Hla May any longer!’

She put her arms round him again and kissed him, a
European habit which he had taught her. A mingled scent
of sandalwood, garlic, coco-nut oil and the jasmine in her
hair floated from her. It was a scent that always made his
teeth tingle. Rather abstractedly he pressed her head back
upon the pillow and looked down at her queer, youthful
face, with its high cheek-bones, stretched eyelids and short,
shapely lips. She had rather nice teeth, like the teeth of a
kitten. He had bought her from her parents two years ago,
for three hundred rupees. He began to stroke her brown
throat, rising like a smooth, slender stalk from the collarless
ingyi.

‘You only like me because I am a white man and have
money,’ he said.

‘Master, I love you, I love you more than anything in
the world. Why do you say that? Have I not always been
faithful to you?’

‘You have a Burmese lover.’

‘Ugh!’ Ma Hla May affected to shudder at the thought.
‘To think of their horrible brown hands touching me! I
should die if a Burman touched me!’

‘Liar.’

He put his hand on her breast. Privately, Ma Hla May
did not like this, for it reminded her that her breasts
existed—the ideal of a Burmese woman being to have no
breasts. She lay and let him do as he wished with her, quite
passive yet pleased and faintly smiling, like a cat which
allows one to stroke it. Flory’s embraces meant nothing to
her (Ba Pe, Ko S’la’s younger brother, was secretly her
lover), yet she was bitterly hurt when he neglected them.
Sometimes she had even put love philtres in his food. It was
the idle concubine’s life that she loved, and the visits to her
village dressed in all her finery, when she could boast of
her position as a bo-kadaw—a white man’s wife; for she had
persuaded everyone, herself included, that she was Flory’s
legal wife.

When Flory had done with her he turned away, jaded
and ashamed, and lay silent with his left hand covering his
birthmark. He always remembered the birthmark when he
had done something to be ashamed of. He buried his face
disgustedly in the pillow, which was damp and smelt of
coco-nut oil. It was horribly hot, and the doves outside were
still droning. Ma Hla May, naked, reclined beside Flory,
fanning him gently with a wicker fan she had taken from
the table.

Presently she got up and dressed herself, and lighted a
cigarette. Then, coming back to the bed, she sat down and
began stroking Flory’s bare shoulder. The whiteness of his
skin had a fascination for her, because of its strangeness and
the sense of power it gave her. But Flory twitched his
shoulder to shake her hand away. At these times she was
nauseating and dreadful to him. His sole wish was to get
her out of his sight.

‘Get out,’ he said.

Ma Hla May took her cigarette from her mouth and
tried to offer it to Flory. ‘Why is master always so angry
with me when he has made love to me?’ she said.

‘Get out,’ he repeated.

Ma Hla May continued to stroke Flory’s shoulder. She
had never learned the wisdom of leaving him alone at these
times. She believed that lechery was a form of witchcraft,
giving a woman magical powers over a man, until in the
end she could weaken him to a half-idiotic slave. Each
successive embrace sapped Flory’s will and made the spell
stronger—this was her belief. She began tormenting him
to begin over again. She laid down her cigarette and put
her arms round him, trying to turn him towards her and
kiss his averted face, reproaching him for his coldness.

‘Go away, go away!’ he said angrily. ‘Look in the pocket
of my shorts. There is money there. Take five rupees and
go.’

Ma Hla May found the five-rupee note and stuffed it
into the bosom of her ingyi, but she still would not go. She
hovered about the bed, worrying Flory until at last he
grew angry and jumped up.

‘Get out of this room! I told you to go. I don’t want you
in here after I’ve done with you.’

‘That is a nice way to speak to me! You treat me as
though I were a prostitute.’

‘So you are. Out you go,’ he said, pushing her out of
the room by her shoulders. He kicked her sandals after her.
Their encounters often ended in this way.

Flory stood in the middle of the room, yawning. Should
he go down to the Club for tennis after all? No, it meant
shaving, and he could not face the effort of shaving until
he had a few drinks inside him. He felt his scrubby chin
and lounged across to the mirror to examine it, but then
turned away. He did not want to see the yellow, sunken
face that would look back at him. For several minutes he
stood, slack-limbed, watching the tuktoo stalk a moth above
the bookshelves. The cigarette that Ma Hla May had
dropped burned down with an acrid smell, browning the
paper. Flory took a book from the shelves, opened it and
then threw it away in distaste. He had not even the energy
to read. Oh God, God, what to do with the rest of this
bloody evening?

Flo waddled into the room, wagging her tail and asking
to be taken for a walk. Flory went sulkily into the little
stone-floored bathroom that gave on the bedroom,
splashed himself with lukewarm water and put on his shirt
and shorts. He must take some kind of exercise before the
sun went down. In India it is in some way evil to spend
a day without being once in a muck-sweat. It gives one a
deeper sense of sin than a thousand lecheries. In the dark
evening, after a quite idle day, one’s ennui reaches a pitch
that is frantic, suicidal. Work, prayer, books, drinking,
talking—they are all powerless against it; it can only be
sweated out through the pores of the skin.

Flory went out and followed the road uphill into the
jungle. It was scrub jungle at first, with dense stunted
bushes, and the only trees were half-wild mangoes, bearing
little turpentiny fruits the size of plums. Then the road
struck among taller trees. The jungle was dried-up and
lifeless at this time of year. The trees lined the road in close,
dusty ranks, with leaves a dull olive-green. No birds were
visible except some ragged brown creatures like disreputable
thrushes, which hopped clumsily under the
bushes; in the distance some other bird uttered a cry of ‘Ah
ha ha! Ah ha ha!’—a lonely, hollow sound like the echo
of a laugh. There was a poisonous, ivy-like smell of crushed
leaves. It was still hot, though the sun was losing his glare
and the slanting light was yellow.

After two miles the road ended at the ford of a shallow
stream. The jungle grew greener here, because of the
water, and the trees were taller. At the edge of the stream
there was a huge dead pyinkado tree festooned with
spidery orchids, and there were some wild lime bushes
with white, waxen flowers. They had a sharp scent like
bergamot. Flory had walked fast and the sweat had
drenched his shirt and dribbled, stinging, into his eyes. He
had sweated himself into a better mood. Also, the sight of
this stream always heartened him; its water was quite clear,
rarest of sights in a miry country. He crossed the stream
by the stepping stones, Flo splashing after him, and turned
into a narrow track he knew, which led through the
bushes. It was a track that cattle had made, coming to the
stream to drink, and few human beings ever followed it.
It led to a pool fifty yards up-stream. Here a peepul tree
grew, a great buttressed thing six feet thick, woven of
innumerable strands of wood, like a wooden cable twisted
by a giant. The roots of the tree made a natural cavern,
under which the clear greenish water bubbled. Above and
all round dense foliage shut out the light, turning the place
into a green grotto walled with leaves.

Flory threw off his clothes and stepped into the water.
It was a shade cooler than the air, and it came up to his neck
when he sat down. Shoals of silvery mahseer, no bigger than
sardines, came nosing and nibbling at his body. Flo had also
flopped into the water, and she swam round silently, otterlike,
with her webbed feet. She knew the pool well, for
they often came here when Flory was at Kyauktada.

There was a stirring high up in the peepul tree, and a
bubbling noise like pots boiling. A flock of green pigeons
were up there, eating the berries. Flory gazed up into the
great green dome of the tree, trying to distinguish the birds;
they were invisible, they matched the leaves so perfectly,
and yet the whole tree was alive with them, shimmering,
as though the ghosts of birds were shaking it. Flo rested
herself against the roots and growled up at the invisible
creatures. Then a single green pigeon fluttered down and
perched on a lower branch. It did not know that it was
being watched. It was a tender thing, smaller than a tame
dove, with jade-green back as smooth as velvet, and neck
and breast of iridescent colours. Its legs were like the pink
wax that dentists use.

The pigeon rocked itself backwards and forwards on the
bough, swelling out its breast-feathers and laying its coralline
beak upon them. A pang went through Flory. Alone, alone,
the bitterness of being alone! So often like this, in lonely
places in the forest, he would come upon something—bird,
flower, tree—beautiful beyond all words, if there had been
a soul with whom to share it. Beauty is meaningless until
it is shared. If he had one person, just one, to halve his
loneliness! Suddenly the pigeon saw the man and dog
below, sprang into the air and dashed away swift as a bullet,
with a rattle of wings. One does not often see green pigeons
so closely when they are alive. They are high-flying birds,
living in the treetops, and they do not come to the ground,
or only to drink. When one shoots them, if they are not
killed outright, they cling to the branch until they die, and
drop long after one has given up waiting and gone away.

Flory got out of the water, put on his clothes and
re-crossed the stream. He did not go home by the road, but
followed a foot-track southward into the jungle, intending
to make a detour and pass through a village that lay in the
fringe of the jungle not far from his house. Flo frisked in
and out of the undergrowth, yelping sometimes when her
long ears caught in the thorns. She had once turned up a
hare near here. Flory walked slowly. The smoke of his pipe
floated straight upwards in still plumes. He was happy and
at peace after the walk and the clear water. It was cooler
now, except for patches of heat lingering under the thicker
trees, and the light was gentle. Bullock-cart wheels were
screaming peaceably in the distance.

Soon they had lost their way in the jungle, and were
wandering in a maze of dead trees and tangled bushes.
They came to an impasse where the path was blocked by
large ugly plants like magnified aspidistras, whose leaves
terminated in long lashes armed with thorns. A firefly
glowed greenish at the bottom of a bush; it was getting
twilight in the thicker places. Presently the bullock-cart
wheels screamed nearer, taking a parallel course.

‘Ba le-de?’ the Burman shouted back. There was the
sound of plunging hooves and of yells to the bullocks.

‘Come here, if you please, O venerable and learned sir!
We have lost our way. Stop a moment, O great builder
of pagodas!’

The Burman left his cart and pushed through the jungle,
slicing the creepers with his dah. He was a squat middle-aged
man with one eye. He led the way back to the track,
and Flory climbed onto the flat, uncomfortable bullock-cart.
The Burman took up the string reins, yelled to the
bullocks, prodded the roots of their tails with his short
stick, and the cart jolted on with a shriek of wheels. The
Burmese bullock-cart drivers seldom grease their axles,
probably because they believe that the screaming keeps
away evil spirits, though when questioned they will say
that it is because they are too poor to buy grease.

They passed a whitewashed wooden pagoda, no taller
than a man and half hidden by the tendrils of creeping
plants. Then the track wound into the village, which
consisted of twenty ruinous wooden huts roofed with
thatch, and a well beneath some barren date palms. The
egrets that roosted in the palms were streaming homewards
over the treetops like white flights of arrows. A fat
yellow woman with her longyi hitched under her armpits
was chasing a dog round a hut, smacking at it with a
bamboo and laughing, and the dog was also laughing in
its fashion. The village was called Nyaunglebin—‘the four
peepul trees’; there were no peepul trees there now, probably
they had been cut down and forgotten a century ago.
The villagers cultivated a narrow strip of fields that lay
between the town and the jungle, and they also made
bullock-carts which they sold in Kyauktada. Bullock-cart
wheels were littered everywhere under the houses; massive
things five feet across, with spokes roughly but strongly
carved.

Flory got off the cart and gave the driver a present of
four annas. Some brindled curs hurried from beneath the
houses to sniff at Flo, and a flock of pot-bellied, naked
children, with their hair tied in top-knots, also appeared,
curious about the white man but keeping their distance.
The village headman, a weazened, leaf-brown old man,
came out of his house, and there were shikoings. Flory sat
down on the steps of the headman’s house and re-lighted
his pipe. He was thirsty.

‘Is the water in your well good to drink, thugyi-min?’

The headman reflected, scratching the calf of his left leg
with his right big toenail. ‘Those who drink it, drink it,
thakin. And those who do not drink it, do not drink it.’

‘Ah. That is wisdom.’

The fat woman who had chased the pariah brought a
blackened earthenware teapot and a handleless bowl, and
gave Flory some pale-green tea, tasting of wood-smoke.

‘I must be going, thugyi-min. Thank you for the tea.’

‘God go with you, thakin.’

Flory went home by a path that led out on to the maidan.
It was dark now. Ko S’la had put on a clean ingyi and was
waiting in the bedroom. He had heated two kerosene tins
of bathwater, lighted the petrol lamps and laid out a clean
suit and shirt for Flory. The clean clothes were intended
as a hint that Flory should shave, dress himself and go down
to the Club after dinner. Occasionally he spent the evening
in Shan trousers, loafing in a chair with a book, and Ko
S’la disapproved of this habit. He hated to see his master
behaving differently from other white men. The fact that
Flory often came back from the Club drunk, whereas he
remained sober when he stayed at home, did not alter Ko
S’la’s opinion, because getting drunk was normal and
pardonable in a white man.

‘The woman has gone down to the bazaar,’ he announced,
pleased, as he always was when Ma Hla May left
the house. ‘Ba Pe has gone with a lantern, to look after her
when she comes back.’

‘Good,’ Flory said.

She had gone to spend her five rupees—gambling no
doubt.

‘The holy one’s bathwater is ready.’

‘Wait, we must attend to the dog first. Bring the comb,’
Flory said.

The two men squatted on the floor together and
combed Flo’s silky coat and felt between her toes, picking
out the ticks. It had to be done every evening. She picked
up vast numbers of ticks during the day, horrible grey
things that were the size of pin-heads when they got onto
her, and gorged themselves till they were as large as peas.
As each tick was detached Ko S’la put it on the floor and
carefully crushed it with his big toe.

Then Flory shaved, bathed, dressed, and sat down to
dinner. Ko S’la stood behind his chair, handing him the
dishes and fanning him with the wicker fan. He had
arranged a bowl of scarlet hibiscus flowers in the middle
of the little table. The meal was pretentious and filthy. The
clever ‘Mug’ cooks, descendants of servants trained by
Frenchmen in India centuries ago, can do anything with
food except make it eatable. After dinner Flory walked
down to the Club, to play bridge and get three parts
drunk, as he did most evenings when he was in Kyauktada.

V

In spite of the whisky he had drunk at the Club, Flory
had little sleep that night. The pariah curs were baying the
moon—it was only a quarter full and nearly down by
midnight, but the dogs slept all day in the heat, and they
had begun their moon-choruses already. One dog had
taken a dislike to Flory’s house, and had settled down to
bay at it systematically. Sitting on its bottom fifty yards
from the gate, it let out sharp, angry yelps, one to half a
minute, as regularly as a clock. It would keep this up for
two or three hours, until the cocks began crowing.

Flory lay turning from side to side, his head aching. Some
fool has said that one cannot hate an animal; he should
try a few nights in India, when the dogs are baying the
moon. In the end Flory could stand it no longer. He got up,
rummaged in the tin uniform case under his bed for a rifle
and a couple of cartridges, and went out on to the veranda.

It was fairly light in the quarter moon. He could see the
dog, and he could see his foresight. He rested himself
against the wooden pillar of the veranda and took aim
carefully; then, as he felt the hard vulcanite butt against his
bare shoulder, he flinched. The rifle had a heavy kick, and
it left a bruise when one fired it. The soft flesh of his
shoulder quailed. He lowered the rifle. He had not the
nerve to fire it in cold blood.

It was no use trying to sleep. Flory got his jacket and
some cigarettes, and began to stroll up and down the
garden path, between the ghostly flowers. It was hot, and
the mosquitoes found him out and came droning after him.
Phantoms of dogs were chasing one another on the
maidan. Over to the left the gravestones of the English
cemetery glittered whitish, rather sinister, and one could
see the mounds near by, that were the remains of old
Chinese tombs. The hillside was said to be haunted, and the
Club chokras cried when they were sent up the road at
night.

‘Cur, spineless cur,’ Flory was thinking to himself; without
heat, however, for he was too accustomed to the
thought. ‘Sneaking, idling, boozing, fornicating, soul-examining,
self-pitying cur. All those fools at the Club,
those dull louts to whom you are so pleased to think
yourself superior—they are all better than you, every man
of them. At least they are men in their oafish way. Not
cowards, not liars. Not half-dead and rotting. But
you——’

He had reason to call himself names. There had been a
nasty, dirty affair at the Club that evening. Something
quite ordinary, quite according to precedent; but still
dingy, cowardly, dishonouring.

When Flory had arrived at the Club only Ellis and
Maxwell were there. The Lackersteens had gone to the
station with the loan of Mr Macgregor’s car, to meet their
niece, who was to arrive by the night train. The three men
were playing three-handed bridge fairly amicably when
Westfield came in, his sandy face quite pink with rage,
bringing a copy of a Burmese paper called the Burmese
Patriot. There was a libellous article in it, attacking Mr
Macgregor. The rage of Ellis and Westfield was devilish.
They were so angry that Flory had the greatest difficulty
in pretending to be angry enough to satisfy them. Ellis
spent five minutes in cursing and then, by some extraordinary
process, made up his mind that Dr Veraswami
was responsible for the article. And he had thought of a
counterstroke already. They would put a notice on the
board—a notice answering and contradicting the one Mr
Macgregor had posted the day before. Ellis wrote it out
immediately, in his tiny, clear handwriting:

‘In view of the cowardly insult recently offered to our
Deputy Commissioner, we the undersigned wish to give
it as our opinion that this is the worst possible moment to
consider the election of niggers to this Club,’ etc. etc.

Westfield demurred to ‘niggers’. It was crossed out by
a single thin line and ‘natives’ substituted. The notice was
signed ‘R. Westfield, P. W. Ellis, C. W. Maxwell, J. Flory.’

Ellis was so pleased with his idea that quite half of his
anger evaporated. The notice would accomplish nothing
in itself, but the news of it would travel swiftly round the
town, and would reach Dr Veraswami tomorrow. In
effect, the doctor would have been publicly called a nigger
by the European community. This delighted Ellis. For the
rest of the evening he could hardly keep his eyes from the
notice-board, and every few minutes he exclaimed in glee,
‘That’ll give little fat-belly something to think about, eh?
Teach the little sod what we think of him. That’s the way
to put ’em in their place, eh?’ etc.

Meanwhile, Flory had signed a public insult to his friend.
He had done it for the same reason as he had done a
thousand such things in his life; because he lacked the small
spark of courage that was needed to refuse. For of course
he could have refused if he had chosen; and, equally of
course, refusal would have meant a row with Ellis and
Westfield. And oh, how he loathed a row! The nagging,
the jeers! At the very thought of it he flinched; he could
feel his birthmark palpable on his cheek, and something
happening in his throat that made his voice go flat and
guilty. Not that! It was easier to insult his friend, knowing
that his friend must hear of it.

Flory had been fifteen years in Burma, and in Burma
one learns not to set oneself up against public opinion. But
his trouble was older than that. It had begun in his mother’s
womb, when chance put the blue birthmark on his cheek.
He thought of some of the early effects of his birthmark.
His first arrival at school, aged nine; the stares and, after a
few days, shouts of the other boys; the nickname Blueface,
which lasted until the school poet (now, Flory remembered,
a critic who wrote rather good articles in the Nation)
came out with the couplet:

New-tick Flory does look rum,

Got a face like a monkey’s bum,

whereupon the nickname was changed to Monkey-bum.
And the subsequent years. On Saturday nights the older
boys used to have what they called a Spanish Inquisition.
The favourite torture was for someone to hold you in a
very painful grip known only to a few illuminati and called
Special Togo, while someone else beat you with a conker
on a piece of string. But Flory had lived down ‘Monkey-bum’
in time. He was a liar and a good footballer, the two
things absolutely necessary for success at school. In his last
term he and another boy held the school poet in Special
Togo while the captain of the eleven gave him six with a
spiked running shoe for being caught writing a sonnet. It
was a formative period.

From that school he went to a cheap, third-rate public
school. It was a poor, spurious place. It aped the great
public schools with their traditions of High Anglicanism,
cricket and Latin verses, and it had a school song called ‘The
Scrum of Life’ in which God figured as the Great Referee.
But it lacked the chief virtue of the great public schools,
their atmosphere of literary scholarship. The boys learned
as nearly as possible nothing. There was not enough caning
to make them swallow the dreary rubbish of the curriculum,
and the wretched, underpaid masters were not the
kind from whom one absorbs wisdom unawares. Flory left
school a barbarous young lout. And yet even then there
were, and he knew it, certain possibilities in him; possibilities
that would lead to trouble, as likely as not. But
of course he had suppressed them. A boy does not start his
career nicknamed Monkey-bum without learning his
lesson.

He was not quite twenty when he came to Burma. His
parents, good people and devoted to him, had found him
a place in a timber firm. They had had great difficulty in
getting him the job, had paid a premium they could not
afford; later, he had rewarded them by answering their
letters with careless scrawls at intervals of months. His first
six months in Burma he had spent in Rangoon, where he
was supposed to be learning the office side of his business.
He had lived in a ‘chummery’ with four other youths who
devoted their entire energies to debauchery. And what
debauchery! They swilled whisky which they privately
hated, they stood round the piano bawling songs of insane
filthiness and silliness, they squandered rupees by the
hundred on aged Jewish whores with the faces of crocodiles.
That too had been a formative period.

From Rangoon he had gone to a camp in the jungle,
north of Mandalay, extracting teak. The jungle life was not
a bad one, in spite of the discomfort, the loneliness, and
what is almost the worst thing in Burma, the filthy, monotonous
food. He was very young then, young enough for
hero-worship, and he had friends among the men in his
firm. There were also shooting, fishing, and perhaps once
in a year a hurried trip to Rangoon—pretext, a visit to the
dentist. Oh, the joy of those Rangoon trips! The rush to
Smart and Mookerdum’s bookshop for the new novels out
from England, the dinner at Anderson’s with beefsteaks
and butter that had travelled eight thousand miles on ice,
the glorious drinking-bout! He was too young to realise
what this life was preparing for him. He did not see the
years stretching out ahead, lonely, eventless, corrupting.

He acclimatised himself to Burma. His body grew
attuned to the strange rhythms of the tropical seasons.
Every year from February to May the sun glared in the sky
like an angry god, then suddenly the monsoon blew eastward,
first in sharp squalls, then in a heavy ceaseless downpour
that drenched everything until neither one’s clothes,
one’s bed nor even one’s food ever seemed to be dry. It was
still hot, with a stuffy, vaporous heat. The lower jungle paths
turned into morasses, and the paddy fields were great
wastes of stagnant water with a stale, mousy smell. Books
and boots were mildewed. Naked Burmans in yard-wide
hats of palm-leaf ploughed the paddy fields, driving their
buffaloes through knee-deep water. Later, the women and
children planted the green seedlings of paddy, dabbing
each plant into the mud with little three-pronged forks.
Through July and August there was hardly a pause in the
rain. Then one night, high overhead, one heard a squawking
of invisible birds. The snipe were flying southward
from Central Asia. The rains tailed off, ending in October.
The fields dried up, the paddy ripened, the Burmese children
played hopscotch with gonyin seeds and flew kites in
the cool winds. It was the beginning of the short winter,
when Upper Burma seemed haunted by the ghost of
England. Wild flowers sprang into bloom everywhere,
not quite the same as the English ones, but very like
them—honeysuckle in thick bushes, field roses smelling
of peardrops, even violets in dark places of the forest.
The sun circled low in the sky, and the nights and early
mornings were bitterly cold, with white mists that poured
through the valleys like the steam of enormous kettles.
One went shooting after duck and snipe. There were
snipe in countless myriads, and wild geese in flocks that
rose from the jeel with a roar like a goods train crossing
an iron bridge. The ripening paddy, breast-high and
yellow, looked like wheat. The Burmans went to their
work with muffled heads and their arms clasped across
their breasts, their faces yellow and pinched with the cold.
In the morning one marched through misty, incongruous
wildernesses, clearings of drenched, almost English grass
and naked trees where monkeys squatted in the upper
branches, waiting for the sun. At night, coming back to
camp through the cold lanes, one met herds of buffaloes
which the boys were driving home, with their huge horns
looming through the mist like crescents. One had three
blankets on one’s bed, and game pies instead of the
eternal chicken. After dinner one sat on a log by the vast
camp-fire, drinking beer and talking about shooting. The
flames danced like red holly, casting a circle of light at the
edge of which servants and coolies squatted, too shy to
intrude on the white men and yet edging up to the fire like
dogs. As one lay in bed one could hear the dew dripping
from the trees like large but gentle rain. It was a good life
while one was young and need not think about the future
or the past.

Flory was twenty-four, and due for home leave, when
the War broke out. He had dodged military service, which
was easy to do and seemed natural at the time. The civilians
in Burma had a comforting theory that ‘sticking by one’s
job’ (wonderful language, English! ‘Sticking by’—how different
from ‘sticking to’) was the truest patriotism; there
was even a covert hostility towards the men who threw
up their jobs in order to join the Army. In reality, Flory
had dodged the War because the East had already corrupted
him, and he did not want to exchange his whisky,
his servants and his Burmese girls for the boredom of the
parade-ground and the strain of cruel marches. The War
rolled on, like a storm beyond the horizon. The hot,
blowsy country, remote from danger, had a lonely, forgotten
feeling. Flory took to reading voraciously, and
learned to live in books when life was tiresome. He was
growing adult, tiring of boyish pleasures, learning to think
for himself, almost willy-nilly.

He celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday in hospital,
covered from head to foot with hideous sores which were
called mud-sores, but were probably caused by whisky and
bad food. They left little pits in his skin which did not
disappear for two years. Quite suddenly he had begun to
look and feel very much older. His youth was finished.
Eight years of Eastern life, fever, loneliness and intermittent
drinking, had set their mark on him.

Since then, each year had been lonelier and more bitter
than the last. What was at the centre of all his thoughts
now, and what poisoned everything, was the ever bitterer
hatred of the atmosphere of imperialism in which he lived.
For as his brain developed—you cannot stop your brain
developing, and it is one of the tragedies of the half-educated
that they develop late, when they are already
committed to some wrong way of life—he had grasped the
truth about the English and their Empire. The Indian
Empire is a despotism—benevolent, no doubt, but still a
despotism with theft as its final object. And as to the
English of the East, the sahiblog, Flory had come so to hate
them from living in their society, that he was quite incapable
of being fair to them. For after all, the poor devils
are no worse than anybody else. They lead unenviable
lives; it is a poor bargain to spend thirty years, ill-paid, in
an alien country, and then come home with a wrecked
liver and a pineapple backside from sitting in cane chairs,
to settle down as the bore of some second-rate Club. On
the other hand, the sahiblog are not to be idealised. There
is a prevalent idea that the men at the ‘outposts of Empire’
are at least able and hardworking. It is a delusion. Outside
the scientific services—the Forest Department, the Public
Works Department and the like—there is no particular
need for a British official in India to do his job competently.
Few of them work as hard or as intelligently as the postmaster
of a provincial town in England. The real work of
administration is done mainly by native subordinates; and
the real backbone of the despotism is not the officials but
the Army. Given the Army, the officials and the business
men can rub along safely enough even if they are fools.
And most of them are fools. A dull, decent people, cherishing
and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a
million bayonets.

It is a stifling, stultifying world in which to live. It is a
world in which every word and every thought is censored.
In England it is hard even to imagine such an atmosphere.
Everyone is free in England; we sell our souls in public and
buy them back in private, among our friends. But even
friendship can hardly exist when every white man is a cog
in the wheels of despotism. Free speech is unthinkable. All
other kinds of freedom are permitted. You are free to be
a drunkard, an idler, a coward, a backbiter, a fornicator;
but you are not free to think for yourself. Your opinion
on every subject of any conceivable importance is dictated
for you by the pukka sahibs’ code.

In the end the secrecy of your revolt poisons you like
a secret disease. Your whole life is a life of lies. Year after
year you sit in Kipling-haunted little Clubs, whisky to
right of you, Pink’un to left of you, listening and eagerly
agreeing while Colonel Bodger develops his theory that
these bloody Nationalists should be boiled in oil. You hear
your Oriental friends called ‘greasy little babus’, and you
admit, dutifully, that they are greasy little babus. You see
louts fresh from school kicking grey-haired servants. The
time comes when you burn with hatred of your own
countrymen, when you long for a native rising to drown
their Empire in blood. And in this there is nothing honourable,
hardly even any sincerity. For, au fond, what do you
care if the Indian Empire is a despotism, if Indians are
bullied and exploited? You only care because the right of
free speech is denied you. You are a creature of the despotism,
a pukka sahib, tied tighter than a monk or a savage
by an unbreakable system of taboos.

Time passed, and each year Flory found himself less at
home in the world of the sahibs, more liable to get into
trouble when he talked seriously on any subject whatever.
So he had learned to live inwardly, secretly, in books and
secret thoughts that could not be uttered. Even his talks
with the doctor were a kind of talking to himself; for the
doctor, good man, understood little of what was said to
him. But it is a corrupting thing to live one’s real life in
secret. One should live with the stream of life, not against
it. It would be better to be the thickest-skulled pukka sahib
who ever hiccuped over ‘Forty years on’, than to live silent,
alone, consoling oneself in secret, sterile worlds.

Flory had never been home to England. Why, he could
not have explained, though he knew well enough. In the
beginning accidents had prevented him. First there was the
War, and after the War his firm were so short of trained
assistants that they would not let him go for two years
more. Then at last he had set out. He was pining for
England, though he dreaded facing it, as one dreads facing
a pretty girl when one is collarless and unshaven. When he
left home he had been a boy, a promising boy and handsome
in spite of his birthmark; now, only ten years later,
he was yellow, thin, drunken, almost middle-aged in habits
and appearance. Still, he was pining for England. The ship
rolled westward over wastes of sea like rough-beaten silver,
with the winter trade wind behind her. Flory’s thin blood
quickened with the good food and the smell of the sea. And
it occurred to him—a thing he had actually forgotten in
the stagnant air of Burma—that he was still young enough
to begin over again. He would live a year in civilised
society, he would find some girl who did not mind his
birthmark—a civilised girl, not a pukka memsahib—and
he would marry her and endure ten, fifteen more years of
Burma. Then they would retire—he would be worth
twelve or fifteen thousands pounds on retirement, perhaps.
They would buy a cottage in the country, surround themselves
with friends, books, their children, animals. They
would be free for ever of the smell of pukka sahibdom. He
would forget Burma, the horrible country that had come
near ruining him.

When he reached Colombo he found a cable waiting for
him. Three men in his firm had died suddenly of blackwater
fever. The firm were sorry, but would he please
return to Rangoon at once? He should have his leave at
the earliest possible opportunity.

Flory boarded the next boat for Rangoon, cursing his
luck, and took the train back to his headquarters. He was
not at Kyauktada then, but at another Upper Burma town.
All the servants were waiting for him on the platform. He
had handed them over en bloc to his successor, who had
died. It was so queer to see their familiar faces again! Only
ten days ago he had been speeding for England, almost
thinking himself in England already; and now back in the
old stale scene, with the naked black coolies squabbling
over the luggage and a Burman shouting at his bullocks
down the road.

The servants came crowding round him, a ring of
kindly brown faces, offering presents. Ko S’la had brought
a sambhur skin, the Indians some sweetmeats and a garland
of marigolds, Ba Pe, a young boy then, a squirrel in a
wicker cage. There were bullock-carts waiting for the
luggage. Flory walked up to the house, looking ridiculous
with the big garland dangling from his neck. The light of
the cold-weather evening was yellow and kind. At the gate
an old Indian, the colour of earth, was cropping grass with
a tiny sickle. The wives of the cook and the mali were
kneeling in front of the servants’ quarters, grinding curry
paste on the stone slab.

Something turned over in Flory’s heart. It was one of
those moments when one becomes conscious of a vast
change and deterioration in one’s life. For he had realised,
suddenly, that in his heart he was glad to be coming back.
This country which he hated was now his native country,
his home. He had lived here ten years, and every particle
of his body was compounded of Burmese soil. Scenes like
these—the sallow evening light, the old Indian cropping
grass, the creak of the cartwheels, the streaming egrets—were
more native to him than England. He had sent deep
roots, perhaps his deepest, into a foreign country.

Since then he had not even applied for home leave. His
father had died, then his mother, and his sisters, disagreeable
horse-faced women whom he had never liked, had married
and he had almost lost touch with them. He had no
tie with Europe now, except the tie of books. For he had
realised that merely to go back to England was no remedy
for loneliness; he had grasped the special nature of the hell
that is reserved for Anglo-Indians. Ah, those poor prosing
old wrecks in Bath and Cheltenham! Those tomb-like
boarding-houses with Anglo-Indians littered about in all
stages of decomposition, all talking and talking about what
happened in Boggleywalah in ’88! Poor devils, they know
what it means to have left one’s heart in an alien and hated
country. There was, he saw clearly, only one way out. To
find someone who would share his life in Burma—but
really share it, share his inner, secret life, carry away from
Burma the same memories as he carried. Someone who
would love Burma as he loved it and hate it as he hated
it. Who would help him to live with nothing hidden,
nothing unexpressed. Someone who understood him: a
friend, that was what it came down to.

A friend. Or a wife? The quite impossible she. Someone
like Mrs Lackersteen, for instance? Some damned memsahib,
yellow and thin, scandalmongering over cocktails,
making kit-kit with the servants, living twenty years in the
country without learning a word of the language. Not one
of those, please God.

Flory leaned over the gate. The moon was vanishing
behind the dark wall of the jungle, but the dogs were still
howling. Some lines from Gilbert came into his mind, a
vulgar silly jingle but appropriate—something about ‘discoursing
on your complicated state of mind’. Gilbert was
a gifted little skunk. Did all his trouble, then, simply boil
down to that? Just complicated, unmanly whinings; poor-little-rich-girl
stuff? Was he no more than a loafer using
his idleness to invent imaginary woes? A spiritual Mrs
Wititterly? A Hamlet without poetry? Perhaps. And if so,
did that make it any more bearable? It is not the less bitter
because it is perhaps one’s own fault, to see oneself drifting,
rotting, in dishonour and horrible futility, and all the while
knowing that somewhere within one there is the possibility
of a decent human being.

Oh well, God save us from self-pity! Flory went back
to the veranda, took up the rifle, and, wincing slightly, let
drive at the pariah dog. There was an echoing roar, and
the bullet buried itself in the maidan, wide of the mark. A
mulberry-coloured bruise sprang out on Flory’s shoulder.
The dog gave a yell of fright, took to its heels, and then,
sitting down fifty yards further away, once more began
rhythmically baying.

VI

The morning sunlight slanted up the maidan and struck,
yellow as goldleaf, against the white face of the bungalow.
Four black-purple crows swooped down and perched on
the veranda rail, waiting their chance to dart in and steal
the bread and butter that Ko S’la had set down beside
Flory’s bed. Flory crawled through the mosquito net,
shouted to Ko S’la to bring him some gin, and then went
into the bathroom and sat for a while in a zinc tub of
water that was supposed to be cold. Feeling better after
the gin, he shaved himself. As a rule he put off shaving
until the evening, for his beard was black and grew
quickly.

While Flory was sitting morosely in his bath, Mr Macgregor,
in shorts and singlet on the bamboo mat laid for
the purpose in his bedroom, was struggling with Numbers
5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 of Nordenflycht’s Physical Jerks for the
Sedentary. Mr Macgregor never, or hardly ever, missed his
morning exercises. Number 8 (flat on the back, raise legs
to the perpendicular without bending knees) was downright
painful for a man of forty-three; Number 9 (flat on
the back, rise to a sitting posture and touch toes with tips
of fingers) was even worse. No matter, one must keep fit!
As Mr Macgregor lunged painfully in the direction of his
toes, a brick-red shade flowed upwards from his neck and
congested his face with a threat of apoplexy. The sweat
gleamed on his large, tallowy breasts. Stick it out, stick it
out! At all costs one must keep fit. Mohammed Ali, the
bearer, with Mr Macgregor’s clean clothes across his arm,
watched through the half-open door. His narrow, yellow,
Arabian face expressed neither comprehension nor curiosity.
He had watched these contortions—a sacrifice, he
dimly imagined, to some mysterious and exacting god—every
morning for five years.

At the same time, too, Westfield, who had gone out
early, was leaning against the notched and ink-stained table
of the police station, while the fat Sub-inspector interrogated
a suspect whom two constables were guarding.
The suspect was a man of forty, with a grey, timorous face,
dressed only in a ragged longyi kilted to the knee, beneath
which his lank, curved shins were speckled with tick-bites.

‘Who is this fellow?’ said Westfield.

‘Thief, sir. We catch him in possession of this ring
with two emeralds very-dear. No explanation. How could
he—poor coolie—own a emerald ring? He have stole
it.’

He turned ferociously upon the suspect, advanced his
face tomcat-fashion till it was almost touching the other’s,
and roared in an enormous voice:

‘You stole the ring!’

‘No.’

‘You are an old offender!’

‘No.’

‘You have been in prison!’

‘No.’

‘Turn round!’ bellowed the Sub-inspector on an inspiration.
‘Bend over!’

The suspect turned his grey face in agony towards
Westfield, who looked away. The two constables seized
him, twisted him round and bent him over; the Sub-inspector
tore off his longyi, exposing his buttocks.

‘Look at this, sir!’ He pointed to some scars. ‘He have
been flogged with bamboos. He is an old offender. Therefore
he stole the ring!’

‘All right, put him in the clink,’ said Westfield moodily,
as he lounged away from the table with his hands in his
pockets. At the bottom of his heart he loathed running in
these poor devils of common thieves. Dacoits, rebels—yes;
but not these poor cringing rats! ‘How many have you got
in the clink now, Maung Ba?’ he said.

‘Three, sir.’

The lock-up was upstairs, a cage surrounded by six-inch
wooden bars, guarded by a constable armed with a carbine.
It was very dark, stifling hot, and quite unfurnished, except
for an earth latrine that stank to heaven. Two prisoners
were squatting at the bars, keeping their distance from a
third, an Indian coolie, who was covered from head to foot
with ringworm like a coat of mail. A stout Burmese
woman, wife of a constable, was kneeling outside the cage
ladling rice and watery dahl into tin pannikins.

‘Is the food good?’ said Westfield.

‘It is good, most holy one,’ chorused the prisoners.

The Government provided for the prisoners’ food at the
rate of two annas and a half per meal per man, out of which
the constable’s wife looked to make a profit of one anna.

Flory went outside and loitered down the compound,
poking weeds into the ground with his stick. At that hour
there were beautiful faint colours in everything—tender
green of leaves, pinkish-brown of earth and tree-trunks—like
aquarelle washes that would vanish in the later glare.
Down on the maidan flights of small, low-flying brown
doves chased one another to and fro, and bee-eaters,
emerald green, curvetted like slow swallows. A file of
sweepers, each with his load half hidden beneath his garment,
was marching to some dreadful dumping-hole that
existed on the edge of the jungle. Starveling wretches, with
stick-like limbs and knees too feeble to be straightened,
draped in earth-coloured rags, they were like a procession
of shrouded skeletons walking.

The mali was breaking ground for a new flower-bed,
down by the pigeon-cote that stood near the gate. He was
a lymphatic, half-witted Hindu youth, who lived his life
in almost complete silence, because he spoke some
Manipur dialect which nobody else understood, not even
his Zerbadi wife. His tongue was also a size too large for
his mouth. He salaamed low to Flory, covering his face
with his hand, then swung his mamootie aloft again and
hacked at the dry ground with heavy, clumsy strokes, his
tender back-muscles quivering.

A sharp grating scream that sounded like ‘Kwaaa!’ came
from the servants’ quarters. Ko S’la’s wives had begun their
morning quarrel. The tame fighting cock, called Nero,
strutted zigzag down the path, nervous of Flo, and Ba Pe
came out with a bowl of paddy and they fed Nero and the
pigeons. There were more yells from the servants’ quarters,
and the gruffer voices of men trying to stop the quarrel.
Ko S’la suffered a great deal from his wives. Ma Pu, the
first wife, was a gaunt hard-faced woman, stringy from
much child-bearing, and Ma Yi, the ‘little wife’, was a fat
lazy cat some years younger. The two women fought
incessantly when Flory was in headquarters and they were
together. Once when Ma Pu was chasing Ko S’la with a
bamboo, he had dodged behind Flory for protection, and
Flory had received a nasty blow on the leg.

Mr Macgregor was coming up the road, striding briskly
and swinging a thick walking-stick. He was dressed in
khaki pagri-cloth shirt, drill shorts and a pigsticker topi.
Besides his exercises, he took a brisk two-mile walk every
morning when he could spare the time.

‘Top o’ the mornin’ to ye!’ he called to Flory in a hearty
matutinal voice, putting on an Irish accent. He cultivated
a brisk, invigorating, cold-bath demeanour at this hour of
the morning. Moreover, the libellous article in the Burmese
Patriot, which he had read overnight, had hurt him, and he
was affecting a special cheeriness to conceal this.

‘Morning!’ Flory called back as heartily as he could
manage.

Nasty old bladder of lard! he thought, watching Mr
Macgregor up the road. How his bottom did stick out in
those tight khaki shorts. Like one of those beastly middle-aged
scoutmasters, homosexuals almost to a man, that you
see photographs of in the illustrated papers. Dressing himself
up in those ridiculous clothes and exposing his pudgy,
dimpled knees, because it is the pukka sahib thing to take
exercise before breakfast—disgusting!

A Burman came up the hill, a splash of white and
magenta. It was Flory’s clerk, coming from the tiny
office, which was not far from the church. Reaching the
gate, he shikoed and presented a grimy envelope, stamped
Burmese-fashion on the point of the flap.

Flory opened the letter. It was written on a sheet of
foolscap, and it ran:

Mr John Flory,

Sir,—I the undersigned beg to suggest and
WARN to your honour certain useful pieces of
information whereby your honour will be much profited,
sir.

Sir, it has been remarked in Kyauktada your honour’s
great friendship and intimacy with Dr Veraswami, the
Civil Surgeon, frequenting with him, inviting him to
your house, etc. Sir, we beg to inform you that the said
Dr Veraswami is NOT A GOOD MAN and in no
ways a worthy friend of European gentlemen. The
doctor is eminently dishonest, disloyal and corrupt
public servant. Coloured water is he providing to
patients at the hospital and selling drugs for own profit,
besides many bribes, extortions, etc. Two prisoners has
he flogged with bamboos, afterwards rubbing chilis into
the place if relatives do not send money. Besides this he
is implicated with the Nationalist Party and lately provided
material for a very evil article which appeared in
the Burmese Patriot attacking Mr Macgregor, the
honoured Deputy Commissioner.

He is also sleeping by force with female patients at the
hospital.

Wherefore we are much hoping that your honour
will ESCHEW same Dr Veraswami and not consort
with persons who can bring nothing but evil upon your
honour.

And shall ever pray for your honour’s long health and
prosperity,

(Signed) A Friend.

The letter was written in the shaky round hand of the
bazaar letter-writer, which resembled a copybook exercise
written by a drunkard. The letter-writer, however, would
never have risen to such a word as ‘eschew’. The letter must
have been dictated by a clerk, and no doubt it came
ultimately from U Po Kyin. From ‘the crocodile’, Flory
reflected.

He did not like the tone of the letter. Under its appearance
of servility it was obviously a covert threat. ‘Drop the
doctor or we will make it hot for you’, was what it said
in effect. Not that that mattered greatly; no Englishman
ever feels himself in real danger from an Oriental.

Flory hesitated with the letter in his hands. There are
two things one can do with an anonymous letter. One can
say nothing about it, or one can show it to the person
whom it concerns. The obvious, the decent course was to
give the letter to Dr Veraswami and let him take what
action he chose.

And yet—it was safer to keep out of this business altogether.
It is so important (perhaps the most important of
all the Ten Precepts of the pukka sahib) not to entangle
oneself in ‘native’ quarrels. With Indians there must be no
loyalty, no real friendship. Affection, even love—yes.
Englishmen do often love Indians—native officers, forest
rangers, hunters, clerks, servants. Sepoys will weep like
children when their colonel retires. Even intimacy is allowable,
at the right moments. But alliance, partisanship,
never! Even to know the rights and wrongs of a ‘native’
quarrel is a loss of prestige.

If he published the letter there would be a row and an
official inquiry, and, in effect, he would have thrown in his
lot with the doctor against U Po Kyin. U Po Kyin did not
matter, but there were the Europeans; if he, Flory, were
too conspicuously the doctor’s partisan, there might be hell
to pay. Much better to pretend that the letter had never
reached him. The doctor was a good fellow, but as to
championing him against the full fury of pukka sahibdom—ah,
no, no! What shall it profit a man if he save his own
soul and lose the whole world? Flory began to tear the
letter across. The danger of making it public was very
slight, very nebulous. But one must beware of nebulous
dangers in India. Prestige, the breath of life, is itself
nebulous. He carefully tore the letter into small pieces and
threw them over the gate.

At this moment there was a terrified scream, quite
different from the voices of Ko S’la’s wives. The mali
lowered his mamootie and gaped in the direction of the
sound, and Ko S’la, who had also heard it, came running
bareheaded from the servants’ quarters, while Flo sprang
to her feet and yapped sharply. The scream was repeated.
It came from the jungle behind the house, and it was an
English voice, a woman’s, crying out in terror.

There was no way out of the compound by the back.
Flory scrambled over the gate and came down with his
knee bleeding from a splinter. He ran round the compound
fence and into the jungle, Flo following. Just behind the
house, beyond the first fringe of bushes, there was a small
hollow, which, as there was a pool of stagnant water in it,
was frequented by buffaloes from Nyaunglebin. Flory
pushed his way through the bushes. In the hollow an
English girl, chalk-faced, was cowering against a bush,
while a huge buffalo menaced her with its crescent-shaped
horns. A hairy calf, no doubt the cause of the trouble, stood
behind. Another buffalo, neck-deep in the slime of the
pool, looked on with mild prehistoric face, wondering
what was the matter.

The girl turned an agonised face to Flory as he appeared.
‘Oh, do be quick!’ she cried, in the angry, urgent tone of
people who are frightened. ‘Please! Help me! Help me!’

Flory was too astonished to ask any questions. He
hastened towards her, and, in default of a stick, smacked
the buffalo sharply on the nose. With a timid, loutish
movement the great beast turned aside, then lumbered off
followed by the calf. The other buffalo also extricated itself
from the slime and lolloped away. The girl threw herself
against Flory, almost into his arms, quite overcome by her
fright.

‘Oh, thank you, thank you! Oh, those dreadful things!
What are they? I thought they were going to kill me. What
horrible creatures! What are they?’

‘They’re only water-buffaloes. They come from the
village up there.’

‘Buffaloes?’

‘Not wild buffaloes—bison, we call those. They’re just
a kind of cattle the Burmans keep. I say, they’ve given you
a nasty shock. I’m sorry.’

She was still clinging closely to his arm, and he could
feel her shaking. He looked down, but he could not see her
face, only the top of her head, hatless, with yellow hair as
short as a boy’s. And he could see one of the hands on his
arm. It was long, slender, youthful, with the mottled wrist
of a schoolgirl. It was several years since he had seen such
a hand. He became conscious of the soft, youthful body
pressed against his own, and the warmth breathing out of
it; whereat something seemed to thaw and grow warm
within him.

‘It’s all right, they’re gone,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to
be frightened of.’

The girl was recovering from her fright, and she stood
a little away from him, with one hand still on his arm. ‘I’m
all right,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing. I’m not hurt. They didn’t
touch me. It was only their looking so awful.’

‘They’re quite harmless really. Their horns are set so far
back that they can’t gore you. They’re very stupid brutes.
They only pretend to show fight when they’ve got calves.’

They had stood apart now, and a slight embarrassment
came over them both immediately. Flory had already
turned himself sidelong to keep his birthmarked cheek
away from her. He said:

‘I say, this is a queer sort of introduction! I haven’t asked
yet how you got here. Wherever did you come from—if
it’s not rude to ask?’

‘I just came out of my uncle’s garden. It seemed such a
nice morning, I thought I’d go for a walk. And then those
dreadful things came after me. I’m quite new to this
country, you see.’

‘Your uncle? Oh, of course! You’re Mr Lackersteen’s
niece. We heard you were coming. I say, shall we get out
on to the maidan? There’ll be a path somewhere. What a
start for your first morning in Kyauktada! This’ll give you
rather a bad impression of Burma, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh no; only it’s all rather strange. How thick these
bushes grow! All kind of twisted together and foreign-looking.
You could get lost here in a moment. Is this what
they call jungle?’

‘Scrub jungle. Burma’s mostly jungle—a green, unpleasant
land, I call it. I wouldn’t walk through that grass
if I were you. The seeds get into your stockings and
work their way into your skin.’

He let the girl walk ahead of him, feeling easier when
she could not see his face. She was tallish for a girl, slender,
and wearing a lilac-coloured cotton frock. From the way
she moved her limbs he did not think she could be much
past twenty. He had not noticed her face yet, except to see
that she wore round tortoise-shell spectacles, and that her
hair was as short as his own. He had never seen a woman
with cropped hair before, except in the illustrated papers.

As they emerged on to the maidan he stepped level with
her, and she turned to face him. Her face was oval, with
delicate, regular features; not beautiful, perhaps, but it
seemed so there, in Burma, where all Englishwomen are
yellow and thin. He turned his head sharply aside, though
the birthmark was away from her. He could not bear her
to see his worn face too closely. He seemed to feel the
withered skin round his eyes as though it had been a
wound. But he remembered that he had shaved that morning,
and it gave him courage. He said:

‘I say, you must be a bit shaken up after this business.
Would you like to come into my place and rest a few
minutes before you go home? It’s rather late to be out of
doors without a hat, too.’

‘Oh, thank you, I would,’ the girl said. She could not,
he thought, know anything about Indian notions of propriety.
‘Is this your house here?’

‘Yes. We must go round the front way. I’ll have the
servants get a sunshade for you. This sun’s dangerous for
you, with your short hair.’

They walked up the garden path. Flo was frisking round
them and trying to draw attention to herself. She always
barked at strange Orientals, but she liked the smell of a
European. The sun was growing stronger. A wave of
blackcurrant scent flowed from the petunias beside the
path, and one of the pigeons fluttered to the earth, to spring
immediately into the air again as Flo made a grab at it.
Flory and the girl stopped with one consent, to look at the
flowers. A pang of unreasonable happiness had gone
through them both.

‘You really mustn’t go out in this sun without a hat on,’
he repeated, and somehow there was an intimacy in saying
it. He could not help referring to her short hair somehow,
it seemed to him so beautiful. To speak of it was like
touching it with his hand.

‘Look, your knee’s bleeding,’ the girl said. ‘Did you do
that when you were coming to help me?’

There was a slight trickle of blood, which was drying,
purple, on his khaki stocking. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, but
neither of them felt at that moment that it was nothing.
They began chattering with extraordinary eagerness about
the flowers. The girl ‘adored’ flowers, she said. And Flory
led her up the path, talking garrulously about one plant
and another.

‘Look how these phloxes grow. They go on blooming
for six months in this country. They can’t get too much
sun. I think those yellow ones must be almost the colour
of primroses. I haven’t seen a primrose for fifteen years, nor
a wallflower either. Those zinnias are fine, aren’t they?—like
painted flowers, with those wonderful dead colours.
These are African marigolds. They’re coarse things, weeds
almost, but you can’t help liking them, they’re so vivid and
strong. Indians have an extraordinary affection for them;
wherever Indians have been you find marigolds growing,
even years afterwards when the jungle has buried every
other trace of them. But I wish you’d come into the
veranda and see the orchids. I’ve some I must show that
are just like bells of gold—but literally like gold. And they
smell of honey, almost overpoweringly. That’s about the
only merit of this beastly country, it’s good for flowers. I
hope you’re fond of gardening? It’s our greatest consolation,
in this country.’

‘Oh, I simply adore gardening,’ the girl said.

They went into the veranda. Ko S’la had hurriedly put
on his ingyi and his best pink silk gaungbaung, and he
appeared from within the house with a tray on which were
a decanter of gin, glasses and a box of cigarettes. He laid
them on the table, and, eyeing the girl half apprehensively,
put his hands flat together and shikoed.

‘I expect it’s no use offering you a drink at this hour of
the morning?’ Flory said. ‘I can never get it into my
servant’s head that some people can exist without gin before
breakfast.’

He added himself to their number by waving away the
drink Ko S’la offered him. The girl had sat down in the
wicker chair that Ko S’la had set out for her at the end of
the veranda. The dark-leaved orchids hung behind her head,
with gold trusses of blossom, breathing out warm honey-scent.
Flory was standing against the veranda rail, half
facing the girl, but keeping his birthmarked cheek hidden.

‘What a perfectly divine view you have from here,’ she
said as she looked down the hillside.

‘Yes, isn’t it? Splendid, in this yellow light, before the
sun gets going. I love that sombre yellow colour the
maidan has, and those gold mohur trees, like blobs of
crimson. And those hills at the horizon, almost black. My
camp is on the other side of those hills,’ he added.

The girl, who was long-sighted, took off her spectacles
to look into the distance. He noticed that her eyes were
very clear pale blue, paler than a harebell. And he noticed
the smoothness of the skin round her eyes, like a petal,
almost. It reminded him of his age and his haggard face
again, so that he turned a little more away from her. But
he said on impulse:

‘I say, what a bit of luck your coming to Kyauktada!
You can’t imagine the difference it makes to us to see a new
face in these places. After months of our own miserable
society, and an occasional official on his rounds and
American globe-trotters skipping up the Irrawaddy with
cameras. I suppose you’ve come straight from England?’

‘Well, not England exactly. I was living in Paris before
I came out here. My mother was an artist, you see.’

‘Paris! Have you really lived in Paris? By Jove, just fancy
coming from Paris to Kyauktada! Do you know, it’s
positively difficult, in a hole like this, to believe that there
are such places as Paris.’

‘Do you like Paris?’ she said.

‘I’ve never even seen it. But, good Lord, how I’ve
imagined it! Paris—it’s all a kind of jumble of pictures in
my mind; cafés and boulevards and artists’ studios and
Villon and Baudelaire and Maupassant all mixed up
together. You don’t know how the names of those
European towns sound to us, out here. And did you really
live in Paris? Sitting in cafés with foreign art students,
drinking white wine and talking about Marcel Proust?’

‘Oh, that kind of thing, I suppose,’ said the girl, laughing.

‘What differences you’ll find here! It’s not white wine
and Marcel Proust here. Whisky and Edgar Wallace more
likely. But if you ever want books, you might find something
you liked among mine. There’s nothing but tripe in
the Club library. But of course I’m hopelessly behind the
times with my books. I expect you’ll have read everything
under the sun.’

‘Oh no. But of course I simply adore reading,’ the girl
said.

‘What it means to meet somebody who cares for books!
I mean books worth reading, not that garbage in the Club
libraries. I do hope you’ll forgive me if I overwhelm you
with talk. When I meet somebody who’s heard that books
exist, I’m afraid I go off like a bottle of warm beer. It’s a
fault you have to pardon in these countries.’

‘Oh, but I love talking about books. I think reading is
so wonderful. I mean, what would life be without it? It’s
such a—such a ——’

‘Such a private Alsatia. Yes——’

They plunged into an enormous and eager conversation,
first about books, then about shooting, in which the girl
seemed to have an interest and about which she persuaded
Flory to talk. She was quite thrilled when he described the
murder of an elephant which he had perpetrated some
years earlier. Flory scarcely noticed, and perhaps the girl
did not either, that it was he who did all the talking. He
could not stop himself, the joy of chattering was so great.
And the girl was in a mood to listen. After all, he had saved
her from the buffalo, and she did not yet believe that those
monstrous brutes could be harmless; for the moment he
was almost a hero in her eyes. When one does get any
credit in this life, it is usually for something that one has
not done. It was one of those times when the conversation
flows so easily, so naturally, that one could go on talking
forever. But suddenly their pleasure evaporated, they
started and fell silent. They had noticed that they were no
longer alone.

At the other end of the veranda, between the rails, a coal-black,
moustachioed face was peeping with enormous
curiosity. It belonged to old Sammy, the ‘Mug’ cook.
Behind him stood Ma Pu, Ma Yi, Ko S’la’s four eldest
children, an unclaimed naked child, and two old women
who had come down from the village upon the news that
an ‘Ingaleikma’ was on view. Like carved teak statues with
foot-long cigars stuck in their wooden faces, the two old
creatures gazed at the ‘Ingaleikma’ as English yokels might
gaze at a Zulu warrior in full regalia.

Sammy, seeing himself detected, looked very guilty and
pretended to be rearranging his pagri. The rest of the
audience were a little abashed, except for the two wooden-faced
old women.

‘Dash their cheek!’ Flory said. A cold pang of disappointment
went through him. After all, it would not do
for the girl to stay on his veranda any longer. Simultaneously
both he and she had remembered that they were
total strangers. Her face had turned a little pink. She began
putting on her spectacles.

‘I’m afraid an English girl is rather a novelty to these
people,’ he said. ‘They don’t mean any harm. Go away!’
he added angrily, waving his hand at the audience, whereupon
they vanished.

‘Do you know, if you don’t mind, I think I ought to
be going,’ the girl said. She had stood up. ‘I’ve been out
quite a long time. They may be wondering where I’ve got
to.’

‘Must you really? It’s quite early. I’ll see that you don’t
have to go home bareheaded in the sun.’

‘I ought really——’ she began again.

She stopped, looking at the doorway. Ma Hla May was
emerging onto the veranda.

Ma Hla May came forward with her hand on her hip.
She had come from within the house, with a calm air that
asserted her right to be there. The two girls stood face to
face, less than six feet apart.

No contrast could have been stranger; the one faintly
coloured as an apple-blossom, the other dark and garish,
with a gleam almost metallic on her cylinder of ebony hair
and the salmon-pink silk of her longyi. Flory thought he
had never noticed before how dark Ma Hla May’s face
was, and how outlandish her tiny, stiff body, straight as a
soldier’s, with not a curve in it except the vase-like curve
of her hips. He stood against the veranda rail and watched
the two girls, quite disregarded. For the best part of a
minute neither of them could take her eyes from the other;
but which found the spectacle more grotesque, more incredible,
there is no saying.

Ma Hla May turned her face round to Flory, with her
black brows, thin as pencil lines, drawn together. ‘Who is
this woman?’ she demanded sullenly.

He answered casually, as though giving an order to a
servant:

‘Go away this instant. If you make any trouble I will
afterwards take a bamboo and beat you till not one of your
ribs is whole.’

Ma Hla May hesitated, shrugged her small shoulders and
disappeared. And the other, gazing after her, said curiously:

‘Was that a man or a woman?’

‘A woman,’ he said. ‘One of the servants’ wives, I
believe. She came to ask about the laundry, that was all.’

‘Oh, is that what Burmese women are like? They are
queer little creatures! I saw a lot of them on my way up
here in the train, but do you know, I thought they were
all boys. They’re just like a kind of Dutch doll, aren’t they?’

She had begun to move towards the veranda steps,
having lost interest in Ma Hla May now that she had
disappeared. He did not stop her, for he thought Ma Hla
May quite capable of coming back and making a scene.
Not that it mattered much, for neither girl knew a word
of the other’s language. He called to Ko S’la, and Ko S’la
came running with a big oiled-silk umbrella with bamboo
ribs. He opened it respectfully at the foot of the steps and
held it over the girl’s head as she came down. Flory went
with them as far as the gate. They stopped to shake hands,
he turning a little sideways in the strong sunlight, hiding
his birthmark.

‘My fellow here will see you home. It was ever so kind
of you to come in. I can’t tell you how glad I am to have
met you. You’ll make such a difference to us here in
Kyauktada.’

‘It was nothing. I hope I shall see you at the Club this
evening? I expect your uncle and aunt will be coming
down. Good-bye for the time being, then.’

He stood at the gate, watching them as they went.
Elizabeth—lovely name, too rare nowadays. He hoped she
spelt it with a ‘z’. Ko S’la trotted after her at a queer
uncomfortable gait, reaching the umbrella over her head
and keeping his body as far away from her as possible. A
cool breath of wind blew up the hill. It was one of those
momentary winds that blow sometimes in the cold
weather in Burma, coming from nowhere, filling one with
thirst and with nostalgia for cold sea-pools, embraces of
mermaids, waterfalls, caves of ice. It rustled through the
wide domes of the gold mohur trees, and fluttered the
fragments of the anonymous letter that Flory had thrown
over the gate half an hour earlier.

VII

Elizabeth lay on the sofa in the Lackersteens’ drawing-room,
with her feet up and a cushion behind her head,
reading Michael Arlen’s These Charming People. In a
general way Michael Arlen was her favourite author, but
she was inclined to prefer William J. Locke when she
wanted something serious.

The drawing-room was a cool, light-coloured room
with lime-washed walls a yard thick; it was large, but
seemed smaller than it was, because of a litter of occasional
tables and Benares brassware ornaments. It smelt of chintz
and dying flowers. Mrs Lackersteen was upstairs, sleeping.
Outside, the servants lay silent in their quarters, their heads
tethered to their wooden pillows by the death-like sleep of
midday. Mr Lackersteen, in his small wooden office down
the road, was probably sleeping too. No one stirred except
Elizabeth, and the chokra who pulled the punkah outside
Mrs Lackersteen’s bedroom, lying on his back with one
heel in the loop of the rope.

Elizabeth was just turned twenty-two, and was an
orphan. Her father had been less of a drunkard than his
brother Tom, but he was a man of similar stamp. He was
a tea-broker, and his fortunes fluctuated greatly, but he was
by nature too optimistic to put money aside in prosperous
phases. Elizabeth’s mother had been an incapable, half-baked,
vapouring self-pitying woman who shirked all the
normal duties of life on the strength of sensibilities which
she did not possess. After messing about for years with such
things as Women’s Suffrage and Higher Thought, and
making many abortive attempts at literature, she had
finally taken up with painting. Painting is the only art that
can be practised without either talent or hard work. Mrs
Lackersteen’s pose was that of an artist exiled among ‘the
Philistines’—these, needless to say, included her husband—and
it was a pose that gave her almost unlimited scope for
making a nuisance of herself.

In the last year of the War Mr Lackersteen, who had
managed to avoid service, made a great deal of money, and
just after the Armistice they moved into a huge, new,
rather bleak house in Highgate, with quantities of greenhouses,
shrubberies, stables and tennis courts. Mr Lackersteen
had engaged a horde of servants, even, so great was
his optimism, a butler. Elizabeth was sent for two terms to
a very expensive boarding-school. Oh, the joy, the joy, the
unforgettable joy of those two terms! Four of the girls at
the school were ‘the Honourable’; nearly all of them had
ponies of their own, on which they were allowed to go
riding on Saturday afternoons. There is a short period in
everyone’s life when his character is fixed for ever; with
Elizabeth, it was those two terms during which she rubbed
shoulders with the rich. Thereafter her whole code of
living was summed up in one belief, and that a simple one.
It was that the Good (‘lovely’ was her name for it) is
synonymous with the expensive, the elegant, the aristocratic;
and the Bad (‘beastly’) is the cheap, the low, the
shabby, the laborious. Perhaps it is in order to teach this
creed that expensive girls’ schools exist. The feeling subtilised
itself as Elizabeth grew older, diffused itself through
all her thoughts. Everything from a pair of stockings to a
human soul was classifiable as ‘lovely’ or ‘beastly’. And
unfortunately—for Mr Lackersteen’s prosperity did not
last—it was the ‘beastly’ that had predominated in her life.

The inevitable crash came late in 1919. Elizabeth was
taken away from school, to continue her education at a
succession of cheap, beastly schools, with gaps of a term or
two when her father could not pay the fees. He died when
she was twenty, of influenza. Mrs Lackersteen was left with
an income of £150 a year, which was to die with her. The
two women could not, under Mrs Lackersteen’s management,
live on three pounds a week in England. They
moved to Paris, where life was cheaper and where Mrs
Lackersteen intended to dedicate herself wholly to Art.

Paris! Living in Paris! Flory had been a little wide of the
mark when he pictured those interminable conversations
with bearded artists under the green plane trees. Elizabeth’s
life in Paris had not been quite like that.

Her mother had taken a studio in the Montparnasse
quarter, and relapsed at once into a state of squalid, muddling
idleness. She was so foolish with money that her
income would not come near covering expenses, and for
several months Elizabeth did not even have enough to eat.
Then she found a job as visiting teacher of English to the
family of a French bank manager. They called her notre
mees Anglaise. The banker lived in the twelfth arrondissement,
a long way from Montparnasse, and Elizabeth had
taken a room in a pension near by. It was a narrow, yellow-faced
house in a side-street, looking out onto a poulterer’s
shop, generally decorated with reeking carcases of wild
boars, which old gentlemen like decrepit satyrs would visit
every morning and snuff long and lovingly. Next door to
the poulterer’s was a flyblown café with the sign ‘Café de
l’Amitié. Bock Formidable.’ How Elizabeth had loathed
that pension! The patronne was an old black-clad sneak who
spent her life in tiptoeing up and down stairs in hopes of
catching the boarders washing stockings in their hand-basins.
The boarders, sharp-tongued bilious widows, pursued
the only man in the establishment, a mild, bald
creature who worked in La Samaritaine, like sparrows
worrying a bread-crust. At meals all of them watched each
other’s plates to see who was given the biggest helping. The
bathroom was a dark den with leprous walls and a rickety
verdigrised geyser which would spit two inches of tepid
water into the bath and then mulishly stop working. The
bank manager whose children Elizabeth taught was a man
of fifty, with a fat, worn face and a bald, dark-yellow
crown resembling an ostrich’s egg. The second day after
her arrival he came into the room where the children were
at their lessons, sat down beside Elizabeth and immediately
pinched her elbow. The third day he pinched her on the
calf, the fourth day behind the knee, the fifth day above
the knee. Thereafter, every evening, it was a silent battle
between the two of them, her hand under the table, struggling
and struggling to keep that ferret-like hand away
from her.

It was a mean, beastly existence. In fact, it reached levels
of ‘beastliness’ which Elizabeth had not previously known
to exist. But the thing that most depressed her, most filled
her with the sense of sinking into some horrible lower
world, was her mother’s studio. Mrs Lackersteen was one
of those people who go utterly to pieces when they are
deprived of servants. She lived in a restless nightmare between
painting and housekeeping, and never worked at
either. At irregular intervals she went to a ‘school’ where
she produced greyish still lifes under the guidance of a
master whose technique was founded on dirty brushes; for
the rest, she messed about miserably at home with teapots
and frying-pans. The state of her studio was more than
depressing to Elizabeth; it was evil, Satanic. It was a cold,
dusty pigsty, with piles of books and papers littered all over
the floor, generations of saucepans slumbering in their
grease on the rusty gas-stove, the bed never made till
afternoon, and everywhere—in every possible place where
they could be stepped on or knocked over—tins of paint-fouled
turpentine and pots half full of cold black tea. You
would lift a cushion from a chair and find a plate holding
the remains of a poached egg underneath it. As soon as
Elizabeth entered the door she would burst out:

‘Oh, mother, mother dearest, how can you? Look at the
state of this room! It is so terrible to live like this!’

‘The room, dearest? What’s the matter? Is it untidy?’

‘Untidy! Mother, need you leave that plate of porridge
in the middle of your bed? And those saucepans! It does
look so dreadful. Suppose anyone came in!’

The rapt, other-worldly look which Mrs Lackersteen
assumed when anything like work presented itself, would
come into her eyes.

‘None of my friends would mind, dear. We are such
Bohemians, we artists. You don’t understand how utterly
wrapped up we all are in our painting. You haven’t the
artistic temperament, you see, dear.’

‘I must try and clean some of those saucepans. I just can’t
bear to think of you living like this. What have you done
with the scrubbing-brush?’

‘The scrubbing-brush? Now let me think, I know I saw
it somewhere. Ah yes! I used it yesterday to clean my
palette. But it’ll be all right if you give it a good wash in
turpentine.’

Mrs Lackersteen would sit down and continue smudging
a sheet of sketching paper with a Conté crayon while
Elizabeth worked.

‘How wonderful you are, dear. So practical! I can’t think
whom you inherit it from. Now with me, Art is simply
everything. I seem to feel it like a great Sea surging up inside
me. It swamps everything mean and petty out of existence.
Yesterday I ate my lunch off Nash’s Magazine to save
wasting time washing plates. Such a good idea! When
you want a clean plate you just tear off a sheet,’ etc. etc.
etc.

Elizabeth had no friends in Paris. Her mother’s friends
were women of the same stamp as herself, or elderly
ineffectual bachelors living on small incomes and practising
contemptible half-arts such as wood-engraving or painting
on porcelain. For the rest, Elizabeth saw only foreigners,
and she disliked all foreigners en bloc; or at least all foreign
men, with their cheap-looking clothes and their revolting
table manners. She had one great solace at this time. It was
to go to the American library in the Rue de l’Elysée and
look at the illustrated papers. Sometimes on a Sunday or
her free afternoon she would sit there for hours at the big
shiny table, dreaming, over the Sketch, the Tatler, the
Graphic, the Sporting and Dramatic.

Ah, what joys were pictured there! ‘Hounds meeting on
the lawn of Charlton Hall, the lovely Warwickshire seat
of Lord Burrowdean.’ ‘The Hon. Mrs Tyke-Bowlby in
the Park with her splendid Alsatian, Kublai Khan, which
took second prize at Cruft’s this summer.’ ‘Sunbathing at
Cannes. Left to right: Miss Barbara Pilbrick, Sir Edward
Tuke, Lady Pamela Westrope, Captain “Tuppy” Benacre.’

Lovely, lovely, golden world! On two occasions the face
of an old schoolfellow looked at Elizabeth from the page.
It hurt her in her breast to see it. There they all were, her
old schoolfellows, with their horses and their cars and their
husbands in the cavalry; and here she, tied to that dreadful
job, that dreadful pension, her dreadful mother! Was it
possible that there was no escape? Could she be doomed
for ever to this sordid meanness, with no hope of ever
getting back to the decent world again?

It was not unnatural, with the example of her mother
before her eyes, that Elizabeth should have a healthy loathing
of Art. In fact, any excess of intellect—‘braininess’ was
her word for it—tended to belong, in her eyes, to the
‘beastly’. Real people, she felt, decent people—people who
shot grouse, went to Ascot, yachted at Cowes—were not
brainy. They didn’t go in for this nonsense of writing
books and fooling with paint brushes; and all these highbrow
ideas—Socialism and all that. ‘Highbrow’ was a
bitter word in her vocabulary. And when it happened, as
it did once or twice, that she met a veritable artist who was
willing to work penniless all his life rather than sell himself
to a bank or an insurance company, she despised him far
more than she despised the dabblers of her mother’s circle.
That a man should turn deliberately away from all that was
good and decent, sacrifice himself for a futility that led
nowhere, was shameful, degrading, evil. She dreaded
spinsterhood, but she would have endured it a thousand
lifetimes through rather than marry such a man.

When Elizabeth had been nearly two years in Paris her
mother died abruptly of ptomaine poisoning. The wonder
was that she had not died of it sooner. Elizabeth was left with
rather less than a hundred pounds in the world. Her uncle
and aunt cabled at once from Burma, asking her to come out
and stay with them, and saying that a letter would follow.

Mrs Lackersteen had reflected for some time over the
letter, her pen between her lips, looking down at the page
with her delicate triangular face like a meditative snake.

‘I suppose we must have her out here, at any rate for a
year. What a bore! However, they generally marry within
a year if they’ve any looks at all. What am I to say to the
girl, Tom?’

‘Say? Oh, just say she’ll pick up a husband out here a
damn sight easier than at Home. Something of that sort,
y’know.’

‘My dear Tom! What impossible things you say!’

Mrs Lackersteen wrote:

Of course, this is a very small station and we are in the
jungle a great deal of the time. I’m afraid you will find
it dreadfully dull after the delights of Paris. But really in
some ways these small stations have their advantages for
a young girl. She finds herself quite a queen in the local
society. The unmarried men are so lonely that they
appreciate a girl’s society in a quite wonderful way etc.
etc.

Elizabeth spent thirty pounds on summer frocks and set
sail immediately. The ship, heralded by rolling porpoises,
ploughed across the Mediterranean and down the Canal
into a sea of staring, enamel-like blue, then out into the
green wastes of the Indian Ocean, where flocks of flying
fish skimmed in terror from the approaching hull. At night
the waters were phosphorescent, and the wash of the bow
was like a moving arrowhead of green fire. Elizabeth
‘loved’ the life on board ship. She loved the dancing on
deck at nights, the cocktails which every man on board
seemed anxious to buy for her, the deck games, of which,
however, she grew tired at about the same time as the other
members of the younger set. It was nothing to her that her
mother’s death was only two months past. She had never
cared greatly for her mother, and besides, the people here
knew nothing of her affairs. It was so lovely after those two
graceless years to breathe the air of wealth again. Not that
most of the people here were rich; but on board ship
everyone behaves as though he were rich. She was going
to love India, she knew. She had formed quite a picture of
India, from the other passengers’ conversation; she had
even learned some of the more necessary Hindustani
phrases, such as idher ao, jaldi, sahiblog, etc. In anticipation
she tasted the agreeable atmosphere of Clubs, with
punkahs flapping and barefooted white-turbaned boys
reverently salaaming; and maidans where bronzed Englishmen
with little clipped moustaches galloped to and fro,
whacking polo balls. It was almost as nice as being really
rich, the way people lived in India.

They sailed into Colombo through green glassy waters,
where turtles and black snakes floated basking. A fleet of
sampans came racing out to meet the ship, propelled by
coal-black men with lips stained redder than blood by betel
juice. They yelled and struggled round the gangway while
the passengers descended. As Elizabeth and her friends
came down, two sampan-wallahs, their prows nosing
against the gangway; besought them with yells.

‘Ha, ha! He is not native himself! Oh no! Him European
man, white skin all same missie. Ha ha!’

‘Stop your bat, you two, or I’ll fetch one of you a kick,’
said the husband of Elizabeth’s friend—he was a planter.
They stepped into one of the sampans and were rowed
towards the sun-bright quays. And the successful sampan-wallah
turned and discharged at his rival a mouthful of
spittle which he must have been saving up for a very long
time.

This was the Orient. Scents of coco-nut oil and sandalwood,
cinnamon and turmeric, floated across the water on
the hot, swimming air. Elizabeth’s friends drove her out to
Mount Lavinia, where they bathed in a lukewarm sea that
foamed like Coca-Cola. She came back to the ship in the
evening, and they reached Rangoon a week later.

North of Mandalay the train, fuelled with wood,
crawled at twelve miles an hour across a vast, parched
plain, bounded at its remote edges by blue rings of hills.
White egrets stood poised, motionless, like herons, and
piles of drying chilis gleamed crimson in the sun. Sometimes
a white pagoda rose from the plain like the breast of
a supine giantess. The early tropic night settled down, and
the train jolted on, slowly, stopping at little stations where
barbaric yells sounded from the darkness. Half-naked men
with their long hair knotted behind their heads moved to
and fro in torchlight, hideous as demons in Elizabeth’s eyes.
The train plunged into forest, and unseen branches brushed
against the windows. It was about nine o’clock when they
reached Kyauktada, where Elizabeth’s uncle and aunt were
waiting with Mr Macgregor’s car, and with some servants
carrying torches. Her aunt came forward and took Elizabeth’s
shoulders in her delicate, saurian hands.

‘I suppose you are our niece Elizabeth? We are so pleased
to see you,’ she said, and kissed her.

Mr Lackersteen peered over his wife’s shoulder in the
torchlight. He gave a half-whistle, exclaimed, ‘Well, I’ll be
damned!’ and then seized Elizabeth and kissed her, more
warmly than he need have done, she thought. She had
never seen either of them before.

After dinner, under the punkah in the drawing-room,
Elizabeth and her aunt had a talk together. Mr Lackersteen
was strolling in the garden, ostensibly to smell the
frangipani, actually to have a surreptitious drink that one
of the servants smuggled to him from the back of the
house.

‘My dear, how really lovely you are! Let me look at you
again.’ She took her by the shoulders. ‘I do think that Eton
crop suits you. Did you have it done in Paris?’

‘Yes. Everyone was getting Eton-cropped. It suits you
if you’ve got a fairly small head.’

‘Lovely! And those tortoise-shell spectacles—such a
becoming fashion! I’m told that all the—er—demi-mondaines
in South America have taken to wearing them.
I’d no idea I had such a ravishing beauty for a niece. How
old did you say you were, dear?’

‘Twenty-two.’

‘Twenty-two! How delighted all the men will be when
we take you to the Club tomorrow! They get so lonely,
poor things, never seeing a new face. And you were two
whole years in Paris? I can’t think what the men there can
have been about to let you leave unmarried.’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t meet many men, aunt. Only
foreigners. We had to live so quietly. And I was working,’
she added, thinking this rather a disgraceful admission.

‘Of course, of course,’ sighed Mrs Lackersteen. ‘One
hears the same thing on every side. Lovely girls having to
work for their living. It is such a shame! I think it’s so
terribly selfish, don’t you, the way these men remain
unmarried while there are so many poor girls looking for
husbands?’ Elizabeth not answering this, Mrs Lackersteen
added with another sigh, ‘I’m sure if I were a young girl
I’d marry anybody, literally anybody!’

The two women’s eyes met. There was a great deal that
Mrs Lackersteen wanted to say, but she had no intention
of doing more than hint at it obliquely. A great deal of her
conversation was carried on by hints; she generally contrived,
however, to make her meaning reasonably clear.
She said in a tenderly impersonal tone, as though discussing
a subject of general interest:

‘Of course, I must say this. There are cases when, if girls
fail to get married it’s their own fault. It happens even out here
sometimes. Only a short time ago I remember a case—a
girl came out and stayed a whole year with her brother,
and she had offers from all kinds of men—policemen,
forest officers, men in timber firms with quite good prospects.
And she refused them all; she wanted to marry into
the ICS, I heard. Well, what do you expect? Of course
her brother couldn’t go on keeping her forever. And now
I hear she’s at Home, poor thing, working as a kind of lady
help, practically a servant. And getting only fifteen shillings
a week! Isn’t it dreadful to think of such things?’

‘Dreadful!’ Elizabeth echoed.

No more was said on this subject. In the morning, after
she came back from Flory’s house, Elizabeth was describing
her adventure to her aunt and uncle. They were at
breakfast, at the flower-laden table, with the punkah flapping
overhead and the tall stork-like Mohammedan butler
in his white suit and pagri standing behind Mrs Lackersteen’s
chair, tray in hand.

‘And oh, aunt, such an interesting thing! A Burmese girl
came on to the veranda. I’d never seen one before, at least,
not knowing they were girls. Such a queer little thing—she
was almost like a doll with her round yellow face and her
black hair screwed up on top. She only looked about
seventeen. Mr Flory said she was his laundress.’

The Indian butler’s long body stiffened. He squinted
down at the girl with his white eyeballs large in his black
face. He spoke English well. Mr Lackersteen paused with
a forkful of fish half-way from his plate and his crass mouth
open.

‘Laundress?’ he said. ‘Laundress! I say, dammit, some
mistake there! No such thing as a laundress in this country,
y’know. Laundering work’s all done by men. If you ask
me——’

And then he stopped very suddenly, almost as though
someone had trodden on his toe under the table.

VIII

That evening Flory told Ko S’la to send for the barber—he
was the only barber in the town, an Indian, and he made
a living by shaving the Indian coolies at the rate of eight
annas a month for a dry shave every other day. The
Europeans patronised him for lack of any other. The barber
was waiting on the veranda when Flory came back from
tennis, and Flory sterilised the scissors with boiling water
and Condy’s fluid and had his hair cut.

‘Lay out my best Palm Beach suit,’ he told Ko S’la, ‘and
a silk shirt and my sambhur-skin shoes. Also that new tie that
came from Rangoon last week.’

‘I have done so, thakin,’ said Ko S’la, meaning that he
would do so. When Flory came into the bedroom he
found Ko S’la waiting beside the clothes he had laid out,
with a faintly sulky air. It was immediately apparent that
Ko S’la knew why Flory was dressing himself up (that is,
in hopes of meeting Elizabeth) and that he disapproved of
it.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Flory said.

‘To help you dress, thakin.’

‘I shall dress myself this evening. You can go.’

He was going to shave—the second time that day—and
he did not want Ko S’la to see him take his shaving things
into the bathroom. It was several years since he had shaved
twice in one day. What providential luck that he had sent
for that new tie only last week, he thought. He dressed
himself very carefully, and spent nearly a quarter of an
hour in brushing his hair, which was stiff and would never
lie down after it had been cut.

Almost the next moment, as it seemed, he was walking
with Elizabeth down the bazaar road. He had found her
alone in the Club ‘library’, and with a sudden burst of
courage asked her to come out with him; and she had come
with a readiness that surprised him, not even stopping to
say anything to her uncle and aunt. He had lived so long
in Burma, he had forgotten English ways. It was very dark
under the peepul trees of the bazaar road, the foliage hiding
the quarter moon, but the stars here and there in a gap
blazed white and low, like lamps hanging on invisible
threads. Successive waves of scent came rolling, first the
cloying sweetness of frangipani, then a cold putrid stench
of dung or decay from the huts opposite Dr Veraswami’s
bungalow. Drums were throbbing a little distance away.

As he heard the drums Flory remembered that a pwe was
being acted a little further down the road, opposite U Po
Kyin’s house; in fact, it was U Po Kyin who had made
arrangements for the pwe, though someone else had paid
for it. A daring thought occurred to Flory. He would take
Elizabeth to the pwe! She would love it—she must; no one
with eyes in his head could resist a pwe-dance. Probably
there would be a scandal when they came back to the Club
together after a long absence; but damn it! what did it
matter? She was different from that herd of fools at the
Club. And it would be such fun to go to the pwe together!
At this moment the music burst out with a fearful pandemonium—a
strident squeal of pipes, a rattle like castanets
and the hoarse thump of drums, above which a man’s voice
was brassily squalling.

‘Whatever is that noise?’ said Elizabeth, stopping. ‘It
sounds just like a jazz band!’

‘Native music. They’re having a pwe—that’s a kind of
Burmese play; a cross between a historical drama and a
revue, if you can imagine that. It’ll interest you, I think.
Just round the bend of the road here.’

‘Oh,’ she said rather doubtfully.

They came round the bend into a glare of light. The
whole road for thirty yards was blocked by the audience
watching the pwe. At the back there was a raised stage,
under humming petrol lamps, with the orchestra squalling
and banging in front of it; on the stage two men dressed
in clothes that reminded Elizabeth of Chinese pagodas
were posturing with curved swords in their hands. All
down the roadway it was a sea of white muslin backs of
women, pink scarves flung round their shoulders and black
hair-cylinders. A few sprawled on their mats, fast asleep.
An old Chinese with a tray of peanuts was threading his
way through the crowd, intoning mournfully, ‘Myaypè!
Myaypè!’

‘We’ll stop and watch a few minutes if you like,’ Flory
said.

The blaze of lights and the appalling din of the orchestra
had almost dazed Elizabeth, but what startled her most of
all was the sight of this crowd of people sitting in the road
as though it had been the pit of a theatre.

‘Do they always have their plays in the middle of the
road?’ she said.

‘As a rule. They put up a rough stage and take it down
in the morning. The show lasts all night.’

‘But are they allowed to—blocking up the whole roadway?’

‘Oh yes. There are no traffic regulations here. No traffic
to regulate, you see.’

It struck her as very queer. By this time almost the entire
audience had turned round on their mats to stare at the
‘Ingaleikma’. There were half a dozen chairs in the middle
of the crowd, where some clerks and officials were sitting.
U Po Kyin was among them, and he was making efforts
to twist his elephantine body round and greet the Europeans.
As the music stopped the pock-marked Ba Taik
came hastening through the crowd and shikoed low to
Flory, with his timorous air.

‘Most holy one, my master U Po Kyin asks whether you
and the young white lady will not come and watch our
pwe for a few minutes. He has chairs ready for you.’

‘They’re asking us to come and sit down,’ Flory said to
Elizabeth. ‘Would you like to? It’s rather fun. Those two
fellows will clear off in a moment and there’ll be some
dancing. If it wouldn’t bore you for a few minutes?’

Elizabeth felt very doubtful. Somehow it did not seem
right or even safe to go in among that smelly native crowd.
However, she trusted Flory, who presumably knew what
was proper, and allowed him to lead her to the chairs. The
Burmans made way on their mats, gazing after her and
chattering; her shins brushed against warm muslin-clad
bodies, there was a feral reek of sweat. U Po Kyin leaned
over towards her, bowing as well as he could and saying
nasally:

‘Kindly to sit down, madam! I am most honoured to
make your acquaintance. Good evening, Mr Flory, sir! A
most unexpected pleasure. Had we known that you were
to honour us with your company, we would have provided
whiskies and other European refreshments. Ha ha!’

He laughed, and his betel-reddened teeth gleamed in the
lamplight like red tinfoil. He was so vast and so hideous
that Elizabeth could not help shrinking from him. A
slender youth in a purple longyi was bowing to her and
holding out a tray with two glasses of yellow sherbet, iced.
U Po Kyin clapped his hands sharply, ‘Hey kaung galay!’
he called to a boy beside him. He gave some instructions
in Burmese, and the boy pushed his way to the edge of the
stage.

‘He’s telling them to bring on their best dancer in our
honour,’ Flory said. ‘Look, here she comes.’

A girl who had been squatting at the back of the stage,
smoking, stepped forward into the lamplight. She was
very young, slim-shouldered, breastless, dressed in a pale
blue satin longyi that hid her feet. The skirts of her ingyi
curved outwards above her hips in little panniers, according
to the ancient Burmese fashion. They were like the
petals of a downward-pointing flower. She threw her cigar
languidly to one of the men in the orchestra, and then,
holding out one slender arm, writhed it as though to shake
the muscles loose.

The orchestra burst into a sudden loud squalling. There
were pipes like bagpipes, a strange instrument consisting of
plaques of bamboo which a man struck with a little
hammer, and in the middle there was a man surrounded
by twelve tall drums of different sizes. He reached rapidly
from one to another, thumping them with the heel of his
hand. In a moment the girl began to dance. But at first it
was not a dance, it was a rhythmic nodding, posturing and
twisting of the elbows, like the movements of one of those
jointed wooden figures on an old-fashioned roundabout.
The way her neck and elbows rotated was precisely like
a jointed doll, and yet incredibly sinuous. Her hands,
twisting like snakeheads with the fingers close together,
could lie back until they were almost along her forearms.
By degrees her movements quickened. She began to leap
from side to side, flinging herself down in a kind of curtsy
and springing up again with extraordinary agility, in spite
of the long longyi that imprisoned her feet. Then she danced
in a grotesque posture as though sitting down, knees bent,
body leaned forward, with her arms extended and writhing,
her head also moving to the beat of the drums. The
music quickened to a climax. The girl rose upright and
whirled round as swiftly as a top, the panniers of her ingyi
flying out about her like the petals of a snowdrop. Then
the music stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and the girl
sank again into a curtsy, amid raucous shouting from the
audience.

Elizabeth watched the dance with a mixture of amazement,
boredom and something approaching horror. She
had sipped her drink and found that it tasted like hair oil.
On a mat by her feet three Burmese girls lay fast asleep
with their heads on the same pillow, their small oval faces
side by side like the faces of kittens. Under cover of the
music Flory was speaking in a low voice into Elizabeth’s
ear, commenting on the dance.

‘I knew this would interest you; that’s why I brought
you here. You’ve read books and been in civilised places,
you’re not like the rest of us miserable savages here. Don’t
you think this is worth watching, in its queer way? Just
look at that girl’s movements—look at that strange, bent-forward
pose like a marionette, and the way her arms twist
from the elbow like a cobra rising to strike. It’s grotesque,
it’s even ugly, with a sort of wilful ugliness. And there’s
something sinister in it too. There’s a touch of the diabolical
in all Mongols. And yet when you look closely, what art,
what centuries of culture you can see behind it! Every
movement that girl makes has been studied and handed
down through innumerable generations. Whenever you
look closely at the art of these Eastern peoples you can see
that—a civilisation stretching back and back, practically
the same, into times when we were dressed in woad. In
some way that I can’t define to you, the whole life and
spirit of Burma is summed up in the way that girl twists
her arms. When you see her you can see the rice-fields, the
villages under the teak trees, the pagodas, the priests in their
yellow robes, the buffaloes swimming the rivers in the
early morning, Thibaw’s palace——’

His voice stopped abruptly as the music stopped. There
were certain things, and a pwe-dance was one of them, that
pricked him to talk discursively and incautiously; but now
he realised that he had only been talking like a character
in a novel, and not a very good novel. He looked away.
Elizabeth had listened to him with a chill of discomfort.
What was the man talking about? was her first thought.
Moreover, she had caught the hated word Art more than
once. For the first time she remembered that Flory was a
total stranger and that it had been unwise to come out with
him alone. She looked round her, at the sea of dark faces
and the lurid glare of the lamps; the strangeness of the scene
almost frightened her. What was she doing in this place?
Surely it was not right to be sitting among the black people
like this, almost touching them, in the scent of their garlic
and their sweat? Why was she not back at the Club with
the other white people? Why had he brought her here,
among this horde of natives, to watch this hideous and
savage spectacle?

The music struck up, and the pwe-girl began dancing
again. Her face was powdered so thickly that it gleamed
in the lamplight like a chalk mask with live eyes behind
it. With that dead-white oval face and those wooden
gestures she was monstrous, like a demon. The music
changed its tempo, and the girl began to sing in a brassy
voice. It was a song with a swift trochaic rhythm, gay yet
fierce. The crowd took it up, a hundred voices chanting
the harsh syllables in unison. Still in that strange bent
posture the girl turned round and danced with her
buttocks protruded towards the audience. Her silk longyi
gleamed like metal. With hands and elbows still rotating
she wagged her posterior from side to side. Then—astonishing
feat, quite visible through the longyi—she
began to wriggle her two buttocks independently in time
with the music.

There was a shout of applause from the audience. The
three girls asleep on the mat woke up at the same moment
and began clapping their hands wildly. A clerk shouted
nasally ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ in English for the Europeans’
benefit. But U Po Kyin frowned and waved his hand. He
knew all about European women. Elizabeth, however, had
already stood up.

‘I’m going. It’s time we were back,’ she said abruptly.
She was looking away, but Flory could see that her face
was pink.

He stood up beside her, dismayed. ‘But, I say! Couldn’t
you stay a few minutes longer? I know it’s late, but—they
brought this girl on two hours before she was due, in our
honour. Just a few minutes?’

‘I can’t help it, I ought to have been back ages ago. I
don’t know what my uncle and aunt will be thinking.’

She began at once to pick her way through the crowd,
and he followed her, with not even time to thank the pwe-people
for their trouble. The Burmans made way with a
sulky air. How like these English people, to upset everything
by sending for the best dancer and then go away
almost before she had started! There was a fearful row as
soon as Flory and Elizabeth had gone, the pwe-girl refusing
to go on with her dance and the audience demanding that
she should continue. However, peace was restored when
two clowns hurried onto the stage and began letting off
crackers and making obscene jokes.

Flory followed the girl abjectly up the road. She was
walking quickly, her head turned away, and for some
moments she would not speak. What a thing to happen,
when they had been getting on so well together! He kept
trying to apologise.

‘I’m so sorry! I’d no idea you’d mind—’

‘It’s nothing. What is there to be sorry about? I only said
it was time to go back, that’s all.’

‘I ought to have thought. One gets not to notice that
kind of thing in this country. These people’s sense of
decency isn’t the same as ours—it’s stricter in some ways—but——’

‘It’s not that! It’s not that!’ she exclaimed quite angrily.

He saw that he was only making it worse. They walked
on in silence, he behind. He was miserable. What a bloody
fool he had been! And yet all the while he had no inkling
of the real reason why she was angry with him. It was not
the pwe-girl’s behaviour, in itself, that had offended her; it
had only brought things to a head. But the whole expedition—the
very notion of wanting to rub shoulders with all
those smelly natives—had impressed her badly. She was
perfectly certain that that was not how white men ought
to behave. And that extraordinary rambling speech that he
had begun, with all those long words—almost, she
thought bitterly, as though he were quoting poetry! It was
how those beastly artists that you met sometimes in Paris
used to talk. She had thought him a manly man till this
evening. Then her mind went back to the morning’s
adventure, and how he had faced the buffalo barehanded,
and some of her anger evaporated. By the time they
reached the Club gate she felt inclined to forgive him.
Flory had by now plucked up courage to speak again. He
stopped, and she stopped too, in a patch where the boughs
let through some starlight and he could see her face dimly.

‘I say. I say, I do hope you’re not really angry about this?’

‘No, of course I’m not. I told you I wasn’t.’

‘I oughtn’t to have taken you there. Please forgive
me.——Do you know, I don’t think I’d tell the others
where you’ve been. Perhaps it would be better to say
you’ve just been out for a stroll, out in the garden—something
like that. They might think it queer, a white girl
going to a pwe. I don’t think I’d tell them.’

‘Oh, of course I won’t!’ she agreed with a warmness that
surprised him. After that he knew that he was forgiven.
But what it was that he was forgiven, he had not yet
grasped.

They went into the Club separately, by tacit consent.
The expedition had been a failure, decidedly. There was
a gala air about the Club lounge tonight. The entire European
community were waiting to greet Elizabeth, and the
butler and the six chokras, in their best starched white suits,
were drawn up on either side of the door, smiling and
salaaming. When the Europeans had finished their greetings
the butler came forward with a vast garland of flowers
that the servants had prepared for the ‘missie-sahib’. Mr
Macgregor made a very humorous speech of welcome,
introducing everybody. He introduced Maxwell as ‘our
local arboreal specialist’, Westfield as ‘the guardian of law
and order and—ah—terror of the local banditti’, and so on
and so forth. There was much laughter. The sight of a
pretty girl’s face had put everyone in such a good humour
that they could even enjoy Mr Macgregor’s speech—which,
to tell the truth, he had spent most of the evening
in preparing.

At the first possible moment Ellis, with a sly air, took
Flory and Westfield by the arm and drew them away into
the card-room. He was in a much better mood than usual.
He pinched Flory’s arm with his small, hard fingers, painfully
but quite amiably.

‘Well, my lad, everyone’s been looking for you. Where
have you been all this time?’

‘Oh, only for a stroll.’

‘For a stroll! And who with?’

‘With Miss Lackersteen.’

‘I knew it! So you’re the bloody fool who’s fallen into
the trap, are you? You swallowed the bait before anyone
else had time to look at it. I thought you were too old a
bird for that, by God I did!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Mean! Look at him pretending he doesn’t know what
I mean! Why, I mean that Ma Lackersteen’s marked you
down for her beloved nephew-in-law, of course. That is,
if you aren’t bloody careful. Eh, Westfield?’

‘Long enough for you to take her up the garden path,
anyway. You watch your step. Tom Lackersteen may be
a drunken sot, but he’s not such a bloody fool that he wants
a niece hanging round his neck for the rest of his life. And
of course she knows which side her bread’s buttered. So
you take care and don’t go putting your head into the
noose.’

‘Damn it, you’ve no right to talk about people like that.
After all, the girl’s only a kid——’

‘My dear old ass’—Ellis, almost affectionate now that he
had a new subject for scandal, took Flory by the coat
lapel—‘my dear, dear old ass, don’t you go filling yourself
up with moonshine. You think that girl’s easy fruit: she’s
not. These girls out from Home are all the same. “Anything
in trousers but nothing this side the altar”—that’s their
motto, every one of them. Why do you think the girl’s
come out here?’

‘Why? I don’t know. Because she wanted to, I suppose.’

‘My good fool! She’s come out to lay her claws into a
husband, of course. As if it wasn’t well known! When a
girl’s failed everywhere else she tries India, where every
man’s pining for the sight of a white woman. The Indian
marriage-market, they call it. Meat market it ought to be.
Shiploads of ’em coming out every year like carcases of
frozen mutton, to be pawed over by nasty old bachelors
like you. Cold storage. Juicy joints straight from the ice.’

He went through a pantomime of examining a joint of
meat, with goatish sniffs. This joke was likely to last Ellis
a long time; his jokes usually did; and there was nothing
that gave him quite so keen a pleasure as dragging a
woman’s name through mud.

Flory did not see much more of Elizabeth that evening.
Everyone was in the lounge together, and there was the
silly clattering chatter about nothing that there is on these
occasions. Flory could never keep up that kind of conversation
for long. But as for Elizabeth, the civilised atmosphere
of the Club, with the white faces all round her and
the friendly look of the illustrated papers and the ‘Bonzo’
pictures, reassured her after that doubtful interlude at the
pwe.

When the Lackersteens left the Club at nine, it was not
Flory but Mr Macgregor who walked home with them,
ambling beside Elizabeth like some friendly saurian
monster, among the faint crooked shadows of the gold
mohur stems. The Prome anecdote, and many another,
found a new home. Any newcomer to Kyauktada was apt
to come in for rather a large share of Mr Macgregor’s
conversation, for the others looked on him as an unparalleled
bore, and it was a tradition at the Club to
interrupt his stories. But Elizabeth was by nature a good
listener. Mr Macgregor thought he had seldom met so
intelligent a girl.

Flory stayed a little longer at the Club, drinking with
the others. There was much smutty talk about Elizabeth.
The quarrel about Dr Veraswami’s election had been
shelved for the time being. Also, the notice that Ellis had
put up on the previous evening had been taken down. Mr
Macgregor had seen it during his morning visit to the
Club, and in his fair-minded way he had at once insisted on
its removal. So the notice had been suppressed; not, however,
before it had achieved its object.

IX

During the next fortnight a great deal happened.

The feud between U Po Kyin and Dr Veraswami was
now in full swing. The whole town was divided into two
factions, with every native soul from the magistrates down
to the bazaar sweepers enrolled on one side or the other,
and all ready for perjury when the time came. But of the
two parties, the doctor’s was much the smaller and less
efficiently libellous. The editor of the Burmese Patriot had
been put on trial for sedition and libel, bail being refused.
His arrest had provoked a small riot in Rangoon, which
was suppressed by the police with the death of only two
rioters. In prison the editor went on hunger strike, but
broke down after six hours.

In Kyauktada, too, things had been happening. A dacoit
named Nga Shwe O had escaped from the jail in mysterious
circumstances. And there had been a whole crop of
rumours about a projected native rising in the district. The
rumours—they were very vague ones as yet—centred
round a village named Thongwa, not far from the camp
where Maxwell was girdling teak. A weiksa, or magician,
was said to have appeared from nowhere and to be prophesying
the doom of the English power and distributing
magic bullet-proof jackets. Mr Macgregor did not take the
rumours very seriously, but he had asked for an extra force
of Military Police. It was said that a company of Indian
infantry with a British officer in command would be sent
to Kyauktada shortly. Westfield, of course, had hurried to
Thongwa at the first threat, or rather hope, of trouble.

‘God, if they’d only break out and rebel properly for
once!’ he said to Ellis before starting. ‘But it’ll be a bloody
washout as usual. Always the same story with these
rebellions—peter out almost before they’ve begun. Would
you believe it, I’ve never fired my gun at a fellow yet, not
even a dacoit. Eleven years of it, not counting the War, and
never killed a man. Depressing.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Ellis, ‘if they won’t come up to the
scratch you can always get hold of the ringleaders and give
them a good bambooing on the QT. That’s better than
coddling them up in our damned nursing homes of
prisons.’

‘H’m, probably. Can’t do it though, nowadays. All
these kid-glove laws—got to keep them, I suppose, if we’re
fools enough to make ’em.’

‘Oh, rot the laws. Bambooing’s the only thing that
makes any impression on the Burman. Have you seen
them after they’ve been flogged? I have. Brought out of
the jail on bullock-carts, yelling, with their women plastering
mashed bananas on their backsides. That’s something
they do understand. If I had my way I’d give it ’em on the
soles of the feet the same as the Turks do.’

‘Ah well. Let’s hope they’ll have the guts to show a bit
of fight for once. Then we’ll call out the Military Police,
rifles and all. Plug a few dozen of ’em—that’ll clear the air.’

However, the hoped-for opportunity did not come.
Westfield and the dozen constables he had taken with him
to Thongwa—jolly round-faced Gurkha boys, pining to
use their kukris on somebody—found the district depressingly
peaceful. There seemed not the ghost of a rebellion
anywhere; only the annual attempt, as regular as the monsoon,
of the villagers to avoid paying the capitation tax.

The weather was growing hotter and hotter. Elizabeth
had had her first attack of prickly heat. Tennis at the Club
had practically ceased; people would play one languid set
and then fall into chairs and swallow pints of tepid lime-juice—tepid,
because the ice came only twice weekly from
Mandalay and melted within twenty-four hours of
arriving. The Flame of the Forest was in full bloom. The
Burmese women, to protect their children from the sun,
streaked their faces with yellow cosmetic until they looked
like little African witch doctors. Flocks of green pigeons,
and imperial pigeons as large as ducks, came to eat the
berries of the big peepul trees along the bazaar road.

Meanwhile, Flory had turned Ma Hla May out of his
house.

A nasty, dirty job! There was a sufficient pretext—she
had stolen his gold cigarette-case and pawned it at the
house of Li Yeik, the Chinese grocer and illicit pawnbroker
in the bazaar—but still, it was only a pretext. Flory knew
perfectly well, and Ma Hla May knew, and all the servants
knew, that he was getting rid of her because of Elizabeth.
Because of ‘the Ingaleikma with dyed hair’, as Ma Hla May
called her.

Ma Hla May made no violent scene at first. She stood
sullenly listening while he wrote her a cheque for a hundred
rupees—Li Yeik or the Indian chetty in the bazaar
would cash cheques—and told her that she was dismissed.
He was more ashamed than she; he could not look her in
the face, and his voice went flat and guilty. When the
bullock-cart came for her belongings he shut himself in the
bedroom, skulking till the scene should be over.

Cartwheels grated on the drive, there was the sound of
men shouting; then suddenly there was a fearful uproar of
screams. Flory went outside. They were all struggling
round the gate in the sunlight. Ma Hla May was clinging
to the gatepost and Ko S’la was trying to bundle her out.
She turned a face full of fury and despair towards Flory,
screaming over and over, ‘Thakin! Thakin! Thakin!
Thakin! Thakin!’ It hurt him to the heart that she should
still call him thakin after he had dismissed her.

‘What is it?’ he said.

It appeared that there was a switch of false hair that Ma
Hla May and Ma Yi both claimed. Flory gave the switch
to Ma Yi and gave Ma Hla May two rupees to compensate
her. Then the cart jolted away, with Ma Hla May sitting
beside her two wicker baskets, straight-backed and sullen,
and nursing a kitten on her knees. It was only two months
since he had given her the kitten as a present.

Ko S’la, who had long wished for Ma Hla May’s
removal, was not altogether pleased now that it had happened.
He was even less pleased when he saw his master
going to church—or as he called it, to the ‘English pagoda’—for
Flory was still in Kyauktada on the Sunday of the
padre’s arrival, and he went to church with the others.
There was a congregation of twelve, including Mr Francis,
Mr Samuel and six native Christians, with Mrs Lackersteen
playing ‘Abide with Me’ on the tiny harmonium with one
game pedal. It was the first time in ten years that Flory had
been to church, except to funerals. Ko S’la’s notions of
what went on in the ‘English pagoda’ were vague in the
extreme; but he did know that church-going signified
respectability—a quality which, like all bachelors’ servants,
he hated in his bones.

‘There is trouble coming,’ he said despondently to the
other servants. ‘I have been watching him’ (he meant Flory)
‘these ten days past. He has cut down his cigarettes to fifteen
a day, he has stopped drinking gin before breakfast, he
shaves himself every evening—though he thinks I do not
know it, the fool. And he has ordered half a dozen new
silk shirts! I had to stand over the dirzi calling him bahinchut
to get them finished in time. Evil omens! I give him three
months longer, and then good-bye to the peace in this
house!’

‘What, is he going to get married?’ said Ba Pe.

‘I am certain of it. When a white man begins going to
the English pagoda, it is, as you might say, the beginning
of the end.’

‘I have had many masters in my life,’ old Sammy said.
‘The worst was Colonel Wimpole sahib, who used to
make his orderly hold me down over the table while he
came running from behind and kicked me with very thick
boots for serving banana fritters too frequently. At other
times, when he was drunk, he would fire his revolver
through the roof of the servants’ quarters, just above our
heads. But I would sooner serve ten years under Colonel
Wimpole sahib than a week under a memsahib with her
kit-kit. If our master marries I shall leave the same day.’

‘I shall not leave, for I have been his servant fifteen years.
But I know what is in store for us when that woman
comes. She will shout at us because of spots of dust on the
furniture, and wake us up to bring cups of tea in the
afternoon when we are asleep, and come poking into the
cookhouse at all hours and complain over dirty saucepans
and cockroaches in the flour bin. It is my belief that these
women lie awake at nights thinking of new ways to
torment their servants.’

‘They keep a little red book,’ said Sammy, ‘in which
they enter the bazaar-money, two annas for this, four annas
for that, so that a man cannot earn a pice. They make more
kit-kit over the price of an onion than a sahib over five
rupees.’

‘Ah, do I not know it! She will be worse than Ma Hla
May. Women!’ he added comprehensively, with a kind of
sigh.

The sigh was echoed by the others, even by Ma Pu and
Ma Yi. Neither took Ko S’la’s remarks as a stricture upon
her own sex, Englishwomen being considered a race apart,
possibly not even human, and so dreaded that an Englishman’s
marriage is usually the signal for the flight of every
servant in his house, even those who have been with him
for years.

X

But as a matter of fact, Ko S’la’s alarm was premature.
After knowing Elizabeth for ten days, Flory was scarcely
more intimate with her than on the day when he had first
met her.

As it happened, he had her almost to himself during
these ten days, most of the Europeans being in the jungle.
Flory himself had no right to be loitering in headquarters,
for at this time of year the work of timber-extraction was
in full swing, and in his absence everything went to pieces
under the incompetent Eurasian overseer. But he had
stayed—pretext, a touch of fever—while despairing letters
came almost every day from the overseer, telling of disasters.
One of the elephants was ill, the engine of the light
railway that was used for carrying teak logs to the river had
broken down, fifteen of the coolies had deserted. But Flory
still lingered, unable to tear himself away from Kyauktada
while Elizabeth was there, and continually seeking—never,
as yet, to much purpose—to recapture that easy and
delightful friendship of their first meeting.

They met every day, morning and evening, it was true.
Each evening they played a single of tennis at the Club—Mrs
Lackersteen was too limp and Mr Lackersteen too
liverish for tennis at this time of year—and afterwards they
would sit in the lounge, all four together, playing bridge
and talking. But though Flory spent hours in Elizabeth’s
company, and often they were alone together, he was
never for an instant at his ease with her. They talked—so
long as they talked of trivialities—with the utmost freedom,
yet they were distant, like strangers. He felt stiff in
her presence, he could not forget his birthmark; his twice-scraped
chin smarted, his body tortured him for whisky
and tobacco—for he tried to cut down his drinking and
smoking when he was with her. After ten days they
seemed no nearer the relationship he wanted.

For somehow, he had never been able to talk to her as
he longed to talk. To talk, simply to talk! It sounds so little,
and how much it is! When you have existed to the brink
of middle age in bitter loneliness, among people to whom
your true opinion on every subject on earth is blasphemy,
the need to talk is the greatest of all needs. Yet with
Elizabeth serious talk seemed impossible. It was as though
there had been a spell upon them that made all their
conversation lapse into banality; gramophone records,
dogs, tennis racquets—all that desolating Club-chatter. She
seemed not to want to talk of anything but that. He had
only to touch upon a subject of any conceivable interest to
hear the evasion, the ‘I shan’t play’ coming into her voice.
Her taste in books appalled him when he discovered it. Yet
she was young, he reminded himself, and had she not
drunk white wine and talked of Marcel Proust under the
Paris plane trees? Later, no doubt, she would understand
him and give him the companionship he needed. Perhaps
it was only that he had not won her confidence yet.

He was anything but tactful with her. Like all men who
have lived much alone, he adjusted himself better to ideas
than to people. And so, though all their talk was superficial,
he began to irritate her sometimes; not by what he said but
by what he implied. There was an uneasiness between
them, ill-defined and yet often verging upon quarrels.
When two people, one of whom has lived long in the
country while the other is a newcomer, are thrown together,
it is inevitable that the first should act as cicerone
to the second. Elizabeth, during these days, was making her
first acquaintance with Burma; it was Flory, naturally, who
acted as her interpreter, explaining this, commenting upon
that. And the things he said, or the way he said them,
provoked in her a vague yet deep disagreement. For she
perceived that Flory, when he spoke of the ‘natives’, spoke
nearly always in favour of them. He was forever praising
Burmese customs and the Burmese character; he even went
so far as to contrast them favourably with the English. It
disquieted her. After all, natives were natives—interesting,
no doubt, but finally only a ‘subject’ people, an inferior
people with black faces. His attitude was a little too tolerant.
Nor had he grasped, yet, in what way he was antagonising
her. He so wanted her to love Burma as he loved it, not
to look at it with the dull, incurious eyes of a memsahib!
He had forgotten that most people can be at ease in a
foreign country only when they are disparaging the inhabitants.

He was too eager in his attempts to interest her in things
Oriental. He tried to induce her, for instance, to learn
Burmese, but it came to nothing. (Her aunt had explained
to her that only missionary-women spoke Burmese; nice
women found kitchen Urdu quite as much as they needed.)
There were countless small disagreements like that. She
was grasping, dimly, that his views were not the views an
Englishman should hold. Much more clearly she grasped
that he was asking her to be fond of the Burmese, even to
admire them; to admire people with black faces, almost
savages, whose appearance still made her shudder!

The subject cropped up in a hundred ways. A knot of
Burmans would pass them on the road. She, with her still
fresh eyes, would gaze after them, half curious and half
repelled; and she would say to Flory, as she would have said
to anybody:

‘How revoltingly ugly these people are, aren’t they?’

‘Are they? I always think they’re rather charming-looking,
the Burmese. They have such splendid bodies!
Look at that fellow’s shoulders—like a bronze statue. Just
think what sights you’d see in England if people went
about half naked as they do here!’

‘But they have such hideous-shaped heads! Their skulls
kind of slope up behind like a tom-cat’s. And then the way
their foreheads slant back—it makes them look so wicked.
I remember reading something in a magazine about the
shape of people’s heads; it said that a person with a sloping
forehead is a criminal type.’

‘Oh, come, that’s a bit sweeping! Round about half the
people in the world have that kind of forehead.’

‘Oh, well, if you count coloured people, of course——!’

Or perhaps a string of women would pass, going to the
well: heavy-set peasant-girls, copper brown, erect under
their water-pots with strong mare-like buttocks protruded.
The Burmese women repelled Elizabeth more than the
men; she felt her kinship with them, and the hatefulness of
being kin to creatures with black faces.

‘Aren’t they too simply dreadful? So coarse-looking; like
some kind of animal. Do you think anyone could think
those women attractive?’

‘Their own men do, I believe.’

‘I suppose they would. But that black skin—I don’t
know how anyone could bear it!’

‘But, you know, one gets used to the brown skin in
time. In fact they say—I believe it’s true—that after a few
years in these countries a brown skin seems more natural
than a white one. And after all, it is more natural. Take the
world as a whole, it’s an eccentricity to be white.’

‘You do have some funny ideas!’

And so on and so on. She felt all the while an unsatisfactoriness,
an unsoundness in the things he said. It was
particularly so on the evening when Flory allowed Mr
Francis and Mr Samuel, the two derelict Eurasians, to
entrap him in conversation at the Club gate.

Elizabeth, as it happened, had reached the Club a few
minutes before Flory, and when she heard his voice at the
gate she came round the tennis-screen to meet him. The
two Eurasians had sidled up to Flory and cornered him like
a pair of dogs asking for a game. Francis was doing most
of the talking. He was a meagre, excitable man, and as
brown as a cigar-leaf, being the son of a South Indian
woman; Samuel, whose mother had been a Karen, was
pale yellow with dull red hair. Both were dressed in shabby
drill suits, with vast topis beneath which their slender
bodies looked like the stalks of toadstools.

Elizabeth came down the path in time to hear fragments
of an enormous and complicated autobiography. Talking
to white men—talking, for choice, about himself—was the
great joy of Francis’s life. When, at intervals of months, he
found a European to listen to him, his life-history would
pour out of him in unquenchable torrents. He was talking
in a nasal, sing-song voice of incredible rapidity:

‘Of my father, sir, I remember little, but he was very
choleric man and many whackings with big bamboo stick
all knobs on both for self, little half-brother and two
mothers. Also how on occasion of bishop’s visit little half-brother
and I dress in longyis and sent among the Burmese
children to preserve incognito. My father never rose to be
bishop, sir. Four converts only in twenty-eight years, and
also too great fondness for Chinese rice-spirit very fiery
noised abroad and spoil sales of my father’s booklet entitled
The Scourge of Alcohol, published with the Rangoon Baptist
Press, one rupee eight annas. My little half-brother die one
hot weather, always coughing, coughing,’ etc. etc.

The two Eurasians perceived the presence of Elizabeth.
Both doffed their topis with bows and brilliant displays of
teeth. It was probably several years since either of them had
had a chance of talking to an Englishwoman. Francis burst
out more effusively than ever. He was chattering in evident
dread that he would be interrupted and the conversation
cut short.

‘Good evening to you, madam, good evening, good
evening! Most honoured to make your acquaintance,
madam! Very sweltering is the weather these days, is
not? But seasonable for April. Not too much you are
suffering from prickly heat, I trust? Pounded tamarind
applied to the afflicted spot is infallible. Myself I suffer
torments each night. Very prevalent disease among we
Europians.’

He pronounced it Europian, like Mr Chollop in Martin
Chuzzlewit. Elizabeth did not answer. She was looking at
the Eurasians somewhat coldly. She had only a dim idea
as to who or what they were, and it struck her as impertinent
that they should speak to her.

‘Thanks, I’ll remember about the tamarind,’ Flory said.

‘Specific of renowned Chinese doctor, sir. Also, sir-madam,
may I advise to you, wearing only Terai hat is not
judicious in April, sir. For the natives all well, their skulls
are adamant. But for us sunstroke ever menaces. Very
deadly is the sun upon Europian skull. But is it that I detain
you, madam?’

This was said in a disappointed tone. Elizabeth had, in
fact, decided to snub the Eurasians. She did not know why
Flory was allowing them to hold him in conversation. As
she turned away to stroll back to the tennis court, she made
a practice stroke in the air with her racquet, to remind
Flory that the game was overdue. He saw it and followed
her, rather reluctantly, for he did not like snubbing the
wretched Francis, bore though he was.

‘I must be off,’ he said. ‘Good evening, Francis. Good
evening, Samuel.’

‘Good evening, sir! Good evening, madam! Good
evening, good evening!’ They receded with more hat-flourishes.

‘Who are those two?’ said Elizabeth as Flory came up
with her. ‘Such extraordinary creatures! They were in
church on Sunday. One of them looks almost white.
Surely he isn’t an Englishman?’

‘But what are they doing here? Where do they live? Do
they do any work?’

‘They exist somehow or other in the bazaar. I believe
Francis acts as clerk to an Indian moneylender, and Samuel
to some of the pleaders. But they’d probably starve now
and then if it weren’t for the charity of the natives.’

‘The natives! Do you mean to say they—sort of cadge
from the natives?’

‘I fancy so. It would be a very easy thing to do, if one
cared to. The Burmese won’t let anyone starve.’

Elizabeth had never heard of anything of this kind
before. The notion of men who were at least partly white
living in poverty among ‘natives’ so shocked her that she
stopped short on the path, and the game of tennis was
postponed for a few minutes.

‘But how awful! I mean, it’s such a bad example! It’s
almost as bad as if one of us was like that. Couldn’t
something be done for those two? Get up a subscription
and send them away from here, or something?’

‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t help much. Wherever they went
they’d be in the same position.’

‘But couldn’t they get some proper work to do?’

‘I doubt it. You see, Eurasians of that type—men
who’ve been brought up in the bazaar and had no
education—are done for from the start. The Europeans
won’t touch them with a stick, and they’re cut off from
entering the lower-grade Government services. There’s
nothing they can do except cadge, unless they chuck all
pretension to being Europeans. And really you can’t expect
the poor devils to do that. Their drop of white blood is the
sole asset they’ve got. Poor Francis, I never meet him but
he begins telling me about his prickly heat. Natives, you
see, are supposed not to suffer from prickly heat—bosh, of
course, but people believe it. It’s the same with sunstroke.
They wear those huge topis to remind you that they’ve got
European skulls. A kind of coat-of-arms. The bend sinister,
you might say.’

This did not satisfy Elizabeth. She perceived that Flory,
as usual, had a sneaking sympathy with the Eurasians. And
the appearance of the two men had excited a peculiar
dislike in her. She had placed their type now. They looked
like Dagoes. Like those Mexicans and Italians and other
Dago people who play the mauvais rôle in so many a film.

‘They looked awfully degenerate types, didn’t they? So
thin and weedy and cringing; and they haven’t got at all
honest faces. I suppose these Eurasians are very degenerate?
I’ve heard that half-castes always inherit what’s worst in
both races. Is that true?’

‘I don’t know that it’s true. Most Eurasians aren’t very
good specimens, and it’s hard to see how they could be,
with their upbringing. But our attitude towards them is
rather beastly. We always talk of them as though they’d
sprung up from the ground like mushrooms, with all their
faults ready-made. But when all’s said and done, we’re
responsible for their existence.’

‘Responsible for their existence?’

‘Well, they’ve all got fathers, you see.’

‘Oh . . . Of course there’s that. . . But after all, you aren’t
responsible. I mean, only a very low kind of man would—er—have
anything to do with native women, wouldn’t
he?’

‘Oh, quite. But the fathers of both those two were
clergymen in holy orders, I believe.’

He thought of Rosa McFee, the Eurasian girl he had
seduced in Mandalay in 1913. The way he used to sneak
down to the house in a gharry with the shutters drawn;
Rosa’s corkscrew curls; her withered old Burmese mother,
giving him tea in the dark living-room with the fern pots
and the wicker divan. And afterwards, when he had
chucked Rosa, those dreadful, imploring letters on scented
notepaper, which, in the end, he had ceased opening.

Elizabeth reverted to the subject of Francis and Samuel
after tennis.

‘Those two Eurasians—does anyone here have anything
to do with them? Invite them to their houses or anything?’

‘Good gracious, no. They’re complete outcasts. It’s not
considered quite the thing to talk to them, in fact. Most of
us say good morning to them—Ellis won’t even do that.’

‘But you talked to them.’

‘Oh well, I break the rules occasionally. I meant that a
pukka sahib probably wouldn’t be seen talking to them.
But you see, I try—just sometimes, when I have the
pluck—not to be a pukka sahib.’

It was an unwise remark. She knew very well by this
time the meaning of the phrase ‘pukka sahib’ and all it
stood for. His remark had made the difference in their
viewpoint a little clearer. The glance she gave him was
almost hostile, and curiously hard; for her face could look
hard sometimes, in spite of its youth and its flowerlike
skin. Those modish tortoise-shell spectacles gave her a very
self-possessed look. Spectacles are queerly expressive things—almost
more expressive, indeed, than eyes.

As yet he had neither understood her nor quite won her
trust. Yet on the surface, at least, things had not gone ill
between them. He had fretted her sometimes, but the good
impression that he had made that first morning was not yet
effaced. It was a curious fact that she scarcely noticed his
birthmark at this time. And there were some subjects on
which she was glad to hear him talk. Shooting, for example—she
seemed to have an enthusiasm for shooting that was
remarkable in a girl. Horses, also; but he was less knowledgeable
about horses. He had arranged to take her out for
a day’s shooting, later, when he could make preparations.
Both of them were looking forward to the expedition with
some eagerness, though not entirely for the same reason.

XI

Flory and Elizabeth walked down the bazaar road. It
was morning, but the air was so hot that to walk in it was
like wading through a torrid sea. Strings of Burmans
passed, coming from the bazaar, on scraping sandals, and
knots of girls who hurried by four and five abreast, with
short quick steps, chattering, their burnished hair gleaming.
By the roadside, just before you got to the jail, the
fragments of a stone pagoda were littered, cracked and
overthrown by the strong roots of a peepul tree. The angry
carved faces of demons looked up from the grass where
they had fallen. Nearby another peepul tree had twined
itself round a palm, uprooting it and bending it backwards
in a wrestle that had lasted a decade.

They walked on and came to the jail, a vast square block,
two hundred yards each way, with shiny concrete walls
twenty feet high. A peacock, pet of the jail, was mincing
pigeon-toed along the parapet. Six convicts came by, head
down, dragging two heavy handcarts piled with earth,
under the guard of Indian warders. They were long-sentence
men, with heavy limbs, dressed in uniforms of
coarse white cloth with small dunces’ caps perched on their
shaven crowns. Their faces were greyish, cowed and
curiously flattened. Their leg-irons jingled with a clear
ring. A woman came past carrying a basket of fish on her
head. Two crows were circling round it and making darts
at it, and the woman was flapping one hand negligently
to keep them away.

There was a din of voices a little distance away. ‘The
bazaar’s just round the corner,’ Flory said. ‘I think this is
a market morning. It’s rather fun to watch.’

He had asked her to come down to the bazaar with him,
telling her it would amuse her to see it. They rounded the
bend. The bazaar was an enclosure like a very large cattle
pen, with low stalls, mostly palm-thatched, round its edge.
In the enclosure, a mob of people seethed, shouting and
jostling; the confusion of their multicoloured clothes was
like a cascade of hundreds-and-thousands poured out of a
jar. Beyond the bazaar one could see the huge, miry river.
Tree branches and long streaks of scum raced down it at
seven miles an hour. By the bank a fleet of sampans, with
sharp beak-like bows on which eyes were painted, rocked
at their mooring-poles.

Flory and Elizabeth stood watching for a moment. Files
of women passed balancing vegetable baskets on their
heads, and pop-eyed children who stared at the Europeans.
An old Chinese in dungarees faded to sky-blue hurried by,
nursing some unrecognisable, bloody fragment of a pig’s
intestines.

‘Let’s go and poke round the stalls a bit, shall we?’ Flory
said.

‘Is it all right going in among that crowd? Everything’s
so horribly dirty.’

‘Oh, it’s all right, they’ll make way for us. It’ll interest
you.’

Elizabeth followed him doubtfully and even unwillingly.
Why was it that he always brought her to these
places? Why was he forever dragging her in among the
‘natives’, trying to get her to take an interest in them and
watch their filthy, disgusting habits? It was all wrong,
somehow. However, she followed, not feeling able to
explain her reluctance. A wave of stifling air met them;
there was a reek of garlic, dried fish, sweat, dust, anise,
cloves and turmeric. The crowd surged round them,
swarms of stocky peasants with cigar-brown faces,
withered elders with their grey hair tied in a bun behind,
young mothers carrying naked babies astride the hip. Flo
was trodden on and yelped. Low, strong shoulders
bumped against Elizabeth, as the peasants, too busy
bargaining even to stare at a white woman, struggled
round the stalls.

‘Look!’ Flory was pointing with his stick to a stall, and
saying something, but it was drowned by the yells of two
women who were shaking their fists at each other over a
basket of pineapples. Elizabeth had recoiled from the stench
and din, but he did not notice it, and led her deeper into
the crowd, pointing to this stall and that. The merchandise
was foreign-looking, queer and poor. There were vast
pomelos hanging on strings like green moons, red bananas,
baskets of heliotrope-coloured prawns the size of lobsters,
brittle dried fish tied in bundles, crimson chilis, ducks split
open and cured like hams, green coco-nuts, the larvae of the
rhinoceros beetle, sections of sugar-cane, dahs, lacquered
sandals, check silk longyis, aphrodisiacs in the form of large,
soap-like pills, glazed earthenware jars four feet high,
Chinese sweetmeats made of garlic and sugar, green and
white cigars, purple brinjals, persimmon-seed necklaces,
chickens cheeping in wicker cages, brass Buddhas, heart-shaped
betel leaves, bottles of Kruschen salts, switches of
false hair, red clay cooking-pots, steel shoes for bullocks,
papier-mâché marionettes, strips of alligator hide with
magical properties. Elizabeth’s head was beginning to
swim. At the other end of the bazaar the sun gleamed
through a priest’s umbrella, blood-red, as though through
the ear of a giant. In front of a stall four Dravidian women
were pounding turmeric with heavy stakes in a large
wooden mortar. The hot-scented yellow powder flew up
and tickled Elizabeth’s nostrils, making her sneeze. She felt
that she could not endure this place a moment longer. She
touched Flory’s arm.

‘This crowd—the heat is so dreadful. Do you think we
could get into the shade?’

He turned round. To tell the truth, he had been too busy
talking—mostly inaudibly, because of the din—to notice
how the heat and stench were affecting her.

‘Oh, I say, I am sorry. Let’s get out of it at once. I tell
you what, we’ll go along to old Li Yeik’s shop—he’s the
Chinese grocer—and he’ll get us a drink of something. It
is rather stifling here.’

‘All these spices—they kind of take your breath away.
And what is that dreadful smell like fish?’

‘Oh, only a kind of sauce they make out of prawns.
They bury them and then dig them up several weeks
afterwards.’

‘How absolutely horrible!’

‘Quite wholesome, I believe. Come away from that!’ he
added to Flo, who was nosing at a basket of small gudgeon-like
fish with spines on their gills.

Li Yeik’s shop faced the further end of the bazaar. What
Elizabeth had really wanted was to go straight back to the
Club, but the European look of Li Yeik’s shopfront—it
was piled with Lancashire-made cotton shirts and almost
incredibly cheap German clocks—comforted her somewhat
after the barbarity of the bazaar. They were about to
climb the steps when a slim youth of twenty, damnably
dressed in a longyi, blue cricket blazer and bright yellow
shoes, with his hair parted and greased ‘Ingaleik fashion’,
detached himself from the crowd and came after them. He
greeted Flory with a small awkward movement as though
restraining himself from shikoing.

‘What is it?’ Flory said.

‘Letter, sir.’ He produced a grubby envelope.

‘Would you excuse me?’ Flory said to Elizabeth, opening
the letter. It was from Ma Hla May—or rather, it had
been written for her and she had signed it with a cross—and
it demanded fifty rupees, in a vaguely menacing manner.

Flory pulled the youth aside. ‘You speak English? Tell
Ma Hla May I’ll see about this later. And tell her that if
she tries blackmailing me she won’t get another pice. Do
you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And now go away. Don’t follow me about, or there’ll
be trouble.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘A clerk wanting a job,’ Flory explained to Elizabeth as
they went up the steps. ‘They come bothering one at all
hours.’ And he reflected that the tone of the letter was
curious, for he had not expected Ma Hla May to begin
blackmailing him so soon; however, he had not time at the
moment to wonder what it might mean.

They went into the shop, which seemed dark after the
outer air. Li Yeik, who was sitting smoking among his
baskets of merchandise—there was no counter—hobbled
eagerly forward when he saw who had come in. Flory was
a friend of his. He was an old bent-kneed man dressed in
blue, wearing a pigtail, with a chinless yellow face, all
cheek-bones, like a benevolent skull. He greeted Flory with
nasal honking noises which he intended for Burmese, and
at once hobbled to the back of the shop to call for refreshments.
There was a cool sweetish smell of opium. Long
strips of red paper with black lettering were pasted on the
walls, and at one side there was a little altar with a portrait
of two large, serene-looking people in embroidered robes,
and two sticks of incense smouldering in front of it. Two
Chinese women, one old, one a girl, were sitting on a mat
rolling cigarettes with maize straw and tobacco like
chopped horsehair. They wore black silk trousers, and their
feet, with bulging, swollen insteps, were crammed into
red-heeled wooden slippers no bigger than a doll’s. A
naked child was crawling slowly about the floor like a large
yellow frog.

‘Do look at those women’s feet!’ Elizabeth whispered as
soon as Li Yeik’s back was turned. ‘Isn’t it simply dreadful!
How do they get them like that? Surely it isn’t natural?’

‘No, they deform them artificially. It’s going out in
China, I believe, but the people here are behind the times.
Old Li Yeik’s pigtail is another anachronism. Those small
feet are beautiful according to Chinese ideas.’

‘Beautiful! They’re so horrible I can hardly look at them.
These people must be absolute savages!’

‘Oh no! They’re highly civilised; more civilised than we
are, in my opinion. Beauty’s all a matter of taste. There are
a people in this country called the Palaungs who admire
long necks in women. The girls wear broad brass rings to
stretch their necks, and they put on more and more of them
until in the end they have necks like giraffes. It’s no queerer
than bustles or crinolines.’

At this moment Li Yeik came back with two fat, round-faced
Burmese girls, evidently sisters, giggling and carrying
between them two chairs and a blue Chinese teapot
holding half a gallon. The two girls were or had been Li
Yeik’s concubines. The old man had produced a tin of
chocolates and was prising off the lid and smiling in a
fatherly way, exposing three long, tobacco-blackened
teeth. Elizabeth sat down in a very uncomfortable frame
of mind. She was perfectly certain that it could not be right
to accept these people’s hospitality. One of the Burmese
girls had at once gone behind the chairs and begun fanning
Flory and Elizabeth, while the other knelt at their feet and
poured out cups of tea. Elizabeth felt very foolish with the
girl fanning the back of her neck and the Chinaman
grinning in front of her. Flory always seemed to get her
into these uncomfortable situations. She took a chocolate
from the tin Li Yeik offered her, but she could not bring
herself to say thank you.

‘Is that all right?’ she whispered to Flory.

‘All right?’

‘I mean, ought we to be sitting down in these people’s
house? Isn’t it sort of—sort of infra dig?’

‘It’s all right with a Chinaman. They’re a favoured race
in this country. And they’re very democratic in their ideas.
It’s best to treat them more or less as equals.’

‘It’s not bad. It’s a special kind of tea old Li Yeik gets
from China. It has orange blossoms in it, I believe.’

‘Ugh! It tastes exactly like earth,’ she said, having tasted it.

Li Yeik stood holding his pipe, which was two feet long
with a metal bowl the size of an acorn, and watching the
Europeans to see whether they enjoyed his tea. The girl
behind the chair said something in Burmese, at which both
of them burst out giggling again. The one kneeling on the
floor looked up and gazed in a naïve admiring way at
Elizabeth. Then she turned to Flory and asked him whether
the English lady wore stays. She pronounced it s’tays.

‘Ch!’ said Li Yeik in a scandalised manner, stirring the
girl with his toe to silence her.

‘I should hardly care to ask her,’ Flory said.

‘Oh, thakin, please do ask her! We are so anxious to
know.’

There was an argument, and the girl behind the chair
forgot her fanning and joined in. Both of them, it appeared,
had been pining all their lives to see a veritable pair
of s’tays. They had heard so many tales about them; they
were made of steel on the principle of a strait waistcoat, and
they compressed a woman so tightly that she had no
breasts, absolutely no breasts at all! The girls pressed their
hands against their fat ribs in illustration. Would not Flory
be so kind as to ask the English lady? There was a room
behind the shop where she could come with them and
undress. They had been so hoping to see a pair of s’tays!

Then the conversation lapsed suddenly. Elizabeth was
sitting stiffly, holding her tiny cup of tea, which she could
not bring herself to taste again, and wearing a rather hard
smile. A chill fell upon the Orientals; they realised that the
English girl, who could not join in their conversation, was
not at her ease. Her elegance and her foreign beauty, which
had charmed them a moment earlier, began to awe them
a little. Even Flory was conscious of the same feeling. There
came one of those dreadful moments that one has with
Orientals, when everyone avoids everyone else’s eyes, trying
vainly to think of something to say. Then the naked
child, which had been exploring some baskets at the back
of the shop, crawled across to where the Europeans sat. It
examined their shoes and stockings with great curiosity,
and then, looking up, saw their white faces and was seized
with terror. It let out a desolate wail, and began making
water on the floor.

The old Chinese woman looked up, clicked her tongue
and went on rolling cigarettes. No one else took the
smallest notice. A pool began to form on the floor. Elizabeth
was so horrified that she set her cup down hastily and
spilled the tea. She plucked at Flory’s arm.

For a moment everyone gazed in astonishment, and
then they all grasped what was the matter. There was a
flurry and a general clicking of tongues. No one had paid
any attention to the child—the incident was too normal to
be noticed—and now they all felt horribly ashamed.
Everyone began putting the blame on the child. There
were exclamations of ‘What a disgraceful child! What a
disgusting child!’ The old Chinese woman carried the child,
still howling, to the door, and held it out over the step as
though wringing out a bath sponge. And in the same
moment, as it seemed, Flory and Elizabeth were outside
the shop, and he was following her back to the road with
Li Yeik and the others looking after them in dismay.

‘If that’s what you call civilised people——!’ she was
exclaiming.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said feebly. ‘I never expected——’

‘What absolutely disgusting people!’

She was bitterly angry. Her face had flushed a wonderful
delicate pink, like a poppy bud opened a day too soon. It
was the deepest colour of which it was capable. He followed
her past the bazaar and back to the main road, and
they had gone fifty yards before he ventured to speak
again.

‘I’m so sorry that this should have happened! Li Yeik is
such a decent old chap. He’d hate to think that he’d
offended you. Really it would have been better to stay a
few minutes. Just to thank him for the tea.’

‘Thank him! After that!’

‘But honestly, you oughtn’t to mind that sort of thing.
Not in this country. These people’s whole outlook is so
different from ours. One has to adjust oneself. Suppose, for
instance, you were back in the Middle Ages——’

‘I think I’d rather not discuss it any longer.’

It was the first time they had definitely quarrelled. He
was too miserable even to ask himself how it was that he
offended her. He did not realise that this constant striving
to interest her in Oriental things struck her only as perverse,
ungentlemanly, a deliberate seeking after the squalid and
the ‘beastly’. He had not grasped even now with what eyes
she saw the ‘natives’. He only knew that at each attempt
to make her share his life, his thoughts, his sense of beauty,
she shied away from him like a frightened horse.

They walked up the road, he to the left of her and a little
behind. He watched her averted cheek and the tiny gold
hairs on her nape beneath the brim of her Terai hat. How
he loved her, how he loved her! It was as though he had
never truly loved her till this moment, when he walked
behind her in disgrace, not even daring to show his disfigured
face. He made to speak several times, and stopped
himself. His voice was not quite steady, and he did not
know what he could say that did not risk offending her
somehow. At last he said, flatly, with a feeble pretence that
nothing was the matter:

‘It’s getting beastly hot, isn’t it?’

With the temperature at 90 degrees in the shade it was
not a brilliant remark. To his surprise she seized on it with
a kind of eagerness. She turned to face him, and she was
smiling again.

‘Isn’t it simply baking!’

With that they were at peace. The silly, banal remark,
bringing with it the reassuring atmosphere of Club-chatter,
had soothed her like a charm. Flo, who had lagged
behind, came puffing up to them dribbling saliva; in an
instant they were talking, quite as usual, about dogs. They
talked about dogs for the rest of the way home, almost
without a pause. Dogs are an inexhaustible subject. Dogs,
dogs! thought Flory as they climbed the hot hillside, with
the mounting sun scorching their shoulders through their
thin clothes, like the breath of a fire—were they never to
talk of anything except dogs? Or failing dogs, gramophone
records and tennis racquets? And yet, when they kept to
trash like this, how easily, how amicably they could talk!

They passed the glittering white wall of the cemetery
and came to the Lackersteens’ gate. Gold mohur trees grew
round it, and a clump of hollyhocks eight feet high, with
round red flowers like blowsy girls’ faces. Flory took off
his hat in the shade and fanned his face.

‘Well, we’re back before the worst of the heat comes.
I’m afraid our trip to the bazaar wasn’t altogether a success.’

‘Oh, not at all! I enjoyed it, really I did.’

‘No—I don’t know, something unfortunate always
seems to happen.—Oh, by the way! You haven’t forgotten
that we’re going out shooting the day after tomorrow? I
hope that day will be all right for you?’

‘Yes, and my uncle’s going to lend me his gun. Such
awful fun! You’ll have to teach me all about shooting. I
am so looking forward to it.’

‘So am I. It’s a rotten time of year for shooting, but
we’ll do our best. Good-bye for the present, then.’

‘Good-bye, Mr Flory.’

She still called him Mr Flory though he called her
Elizabeth. They parted and went their ways, each thinking
of the shooting trip, which, both of them felt, would in
some way put things right between them.

XII

In the sticky, sleepy heat of the living-room, almost dark
because of the beaded curtains, U Po Kyin was marching
slowly up and down, boasting. From time to time he
would put a hand under his singlet and scratch his sweating
breasts, huge as a woman’s with fat. Ma Kin was sitting on
her mat, smoking slender white cigars. Through the open
door of the bedroom one could see the corner of U Po
Kyin’s huge square bed, with carved teak posts, like a
catafalque, on which he had committed many and many
a rape.

Ma Kin was now hearing for the first time of the ‘other
affair’ which underlay U Po Kyin’s attack on Dr Veraswami.
Much as he despised her intelligence, U Po Kyin
usually let Ma Kin into his secrets sooner or later. She was
the only person in his immediate circle who was not afraid
of him, and there was therefore a pleasure in impressing
her.

‘Well, Kin Kin,’ he said, ‘you see how it has all gone
according to plan! Eighteen anonymous letters already, and
every one of them a masterpiece. I would repeat some of
them to you if I thought you were capable of appreciating
them.’

‘But supposing the Europeans take no notice of your
anonymous letters? What then?’

‘Take no notice? Aha, no fear of that! I think I know
something about the European mentality. Let me tell you,
Kin Kin, that if there is one thing I can do, it is to write
an anonymous letter.’

This was true. U Po Kyin’s letters had already taken
effect and especially on their chief target, Mr Macgregor.

Only two days earlier than this, Mr Macgregor had
spent a very troubled evening in trying to make up his
mind whether Dr Veraswami was or was not guilty of
disloyalty to the Government. Of course, it was not a
question of any overt act of disloyalty—that was quite
irrelevant. The point was, was the doctor the kind of man
who would hold seditious opinions? In India you are not
judged for what you do, but for what you are. The merest
breath of suspicion against his loyalty can ruin an Oriental
official. Mr Macgregor had too just a nature to condemn
even an Oriental out of hand. He had puzzled as late as
midnight over a whole pile of confidential papers, including
the five anonymous letters he had received, besides
two others that had been forwarded to him by Westfield,
pinned together with a cactus thorn.

It was not only the letters. Rumours about the doctor
had been pouring in from every side. U Po Kyin fully
grasped that to call the doctor a traitor was not enough in
itself; it was necessary to attack his reputation from every
possible angle. The doctor was charged not only with
sedition, but also with extortion, rape, torture, performing
illegal operations, performing operations while blind
drunk, murder by poison, murder by sympathetic magic,
eating beef, selling death certificates to murderers, wearing
his shoes in the precincts of the pagoda and making homosexual
attempts on the Military Police drummer-boy. To
hear what was said of him, anyone would have imagined
the doctor a compound of Machiavelli, Sweeney Todd and
the Marquis de Sade. Mr Macgregor had not paid much
attention at first. He was too accustomed to this kind of
thing. But with the last of the anonymous letters U Po
Kyin had brought off a stroke that was brilliant even for
him.

It concerned the escape of Nga Shwe O, the dacoit, from
Kyauktada jail. Nga Shwe O, who was in the middle of
a well-earned seven years, had been preparing his escape for
several months past, and as a start his friends outside had
bribed one of the Indian warders. The warder received his
hundred rupees in advance, applied for leave to visit the
death-bed of a relative and spent several busy days in the
Mandalay brothels. Time passed, and the day of the escape
was postponed several times—the warder, meanwhile,
growing more and more homesick for the brothels. Finally
he decided to earn a further reward by betraying the plot
to U Po Kyin. But U Po Kyin, as usual, saw his chance.
He told the warder on dire penalties to hold his tongue,
and then, on the very night of the escape, when it was too
late to do anything, sent another anonymous letter to Mr
Macgregor, warning him that an escape was being
attempted. The letter added, needless to say, that Dr
Veraswami, the superintendent of the jail, had been bribed
for his connivance.

In the morning there was a hullabaloo and a rushing to
and fro of warders and policemen at the jail, for Nga Shwe
O had escaped. (He was a long way down the river, in a
sampan provided by U Po Kyin.) This time Mr Macgregor
was taken aback. Whoever had written the letter
must have been privy to the plot, and was probably telling
the truth about the doctor’s connivance. It was a very
serious matter. A jail superintendent who will take bribes
to let a prisoner escape is capable of anything. And therefore—perhaps
the logical sequence was not quite clear, but
it was clear enough to Mr Macgregor—therefore the
charge of sedition, which was the main charge against the
doctor, became much more credible.

U Po Kyin had attacked the other Europeans at the same
time. Flory, who was the doctor’s friend and his chief
source of prestige, had been scared easily enough into
deserting him. With Westfield it was a little harder. Westfield,
as a policeman, knew a great deal about U Po Kyin
and might conceivably upset his plans. Policemen and
magistrates are natural enemies. But U Po Kyin had
known how to turn even this fact to advantage. He had
accused the doctor, anonymously of course, of being in
league with the notorious scoundrel and bribe-taker U Po
Kyin. That settled Westfield. As for Ellis, no anonymous
letters were needed in his case; nothing could possibly
make him think worse of the doctor than he did already.

U Po Kyin had even sent one of his anonymous letters
to Mrs Lackersteen, for he knew the power of European
women. Dr Veraswami, the letter said, was inciting the
natives to abduct and rape the European women—no
details were given, nor were they needed. U Po Kyin had
touched Mrs Lackersteen’s weak spot. To her mind the
words ‘sedition’, ‘Nationalism’, ‘rebellion’, ‘Home Rule’,
conveyed one thing and one only, and that was a picture
of herself being raped by a procession of jet-black coolies
with rolling white eyeballs. It was a thought that kept her
awake at night sometimes. Whatever good regard the
Europeans might once have had for the doctor was crumbling
rapidly.

‘So you see,’ said U Po Kyin with a pleased air, ‘you see
how I have undermined him. He is like a tree sawn through
at the base. One tap and down he comes. In three weeks
or less I shall deliver that tap.’

‘How?’

‘I am just coming to that. I think it is time for you to
hear about it. You have no sense in these matters, but you
know how to hold your tongue. You have heard talk of
this rebellion that is brewing near Thongwa village?’

‘Yes. They are very foolish, those villagers. What can
they do with their dahs and spears against the Indian
soldiers? They will be shot down like wild animals.’

‘Of course. If there is any fighting it will be a massacre.
But they are only a pack of superstitious peasants. They
have put their faith in these absurd bullet-proof jackets that
are being distributed to them. I despise such ignorance.’

‘Poor men! Why do you not stop them, Ko Po Kyin?
There is no need to arrest anybody. You have only to go
to the village and tell them that you know their plans, and
they will never dare to go on.’

‘Ah well, I could stop them if I chose, of course. But then
I do not choose. I have my reasons. You see, Kin Kin—you
will please keep silent about this—this is, so to speak, my
own rebellion. I arranged it myself.’

‘What!’

Ma Kin dropped her cigar. Her eyes had opened so wide
that the pale blue white showed all round the pupil. She
was horrified. She burst out——

‘Ko Po Kyin, what are you saying? You do not mean
it! You, raising a rebellion—it cannot be true!’

‘Certainly it is true. And a very good job we are making
of it. That magician whom I brought from Rangoon is a
clever fellow. He has toured all over India as a circus
conjurer. The bullet-proof jackets were bought at Whiteaway
& Laidlaw’s stores, one rupee eight annas each. They
are costing me a pretty penny, I can tell you.’

‘But, Ko Po Kyin! A rebellion! The terrible fighting and
shooting, and all the poor men who will be killed! Surely
you have not gone mad? Are you not afraid of being shot
yourself?’

U Po Kyin halted in his stride. He was astonished. ‘Good
gracious, woman, what idea have you got hold of now?
You do not suppose that I am rebelling against the Government?
I—a Government servant of thirty years’ standing!
Good heavens, no! I said that I had started the rebellion, not
that I was taking part in it. It is these fools of villagers who
are going to risk their skins, not I. No one dreams that I
have anything to do with it, or ever will, except Ba Sein
and one or two others.’

‘But you said it was you who were persuading them to
rebel?’

‘Of course. I have accused Veraswami of raising a rebellion
against the Government. Well, I must have a rebellion
to show, must I not?’

‘Ah, I see. And when the rebellion breaks out, you are
going to say that Dr Veraswami is to blame for it. Is that
it?’

‘How slow you are! I should have thought even a fool
would have seen that I am raising this rebellion merely in
order to crush it. I am—what is that expression Mr Macgregor
uses? Agent provocateur—Latin, you would not
understand. I am agent provocateur. First I persuade these
fools at Thongwa to rebel, and then I arrest them as rebels.
At the very moment when it is due to start, I shall pounce
on the ringleaders and clap every one of them into jail.
After that, I dare say there may possibly be some fighting.
A few men may be killed and a few more sent to the
Andamans. But meanwhile, I shall be first in the field. U
Po Kyin, the man who quelled a most dangerous rising in
the nick of time! I shall be the hero of the district.’

U Po Kyin, justly proud of his plan, began to pace up
and down the room again with his hands behind his back,
smiling. Ma Kin considered the plan in silence for some
time. Finally she said:

‘I still do not see why you are doing this, Ko Po Kyin.
Where is it all leading? And what has it got to do with Dr
Veraswami?’

‘I shall never teach you wisdom, Kin Kin! Did I not
tell you at the beginning that Veraswami stands in my
way? This rebellion is the very thing to get rid of him. Of
course we shall never prove that he is responsible for it;
but what does that matter? All the Europeans will take
it for granted that he is mixed up in it somehow. That is
how their minds work. He will be ruined for life. And his
fall is my rise. The blacker I can paint him, the more
glorious my own conduct will appear. Now do you
understand?’

‘Yes, I do understand. And I think it is a base, evil plan.
I wonder you are not ashamed to tell it me.’

‘Now, Kin Kin! Surely you are not going to start that
nonsense over again?’

‘Ko Po Kyin, why is it that you are only happy when
you are being wicked? Why is it that everything you do
must bring evil to others? Think of that poor doctor who
will be dismissed from his post, and those villagers who
will be shot or flogged with bamboos or imprisoned for
life. Is it necessary to do such things? What can you want
with more money when you are rich already?’

‘Money! Who is talking about money? Some day,
woman, you will realise that there are other things in the
world besides money. Fame, for example. Greatness. Do
you realise that the Governor of Burma will very probably
pin an Order on my breast for my loyal action in this affair?
Would not even you be proud of such an honour as that?’

Ma Kin shook her head, unimpressed. ‘When will you
remember, Ko Po Kyin, that you are not going to live a
thousand years? Consider what happens to those who have
lived wickedly. There is such a thing, for instance, as being
turned into a rat or a frog. There is even hell. I remember
what a priest said to me once about hell, something that
he had translated from the Pali scriptures, and it was very
terrible. He said, “Once in a thousand centuries two red-hot
spears will meet in your heart, and you will say to
yourself, ‘Another thousand centuries of my torment are
ended, and there is as much to come as there has been
before.’ ” Is it not very dreadful to think of such things, Ko
Po Kyin?’

U Po Kyin laughed and gave a careless wave of his hand
that meant ‘pagodas’.

‘Well, I hope you may still laugh when it comes to the
end. But for myself, I should not care to look back upon
such a life.’

She re-lighted her cigar with her thin shoulder turned
disapprovingly on U Po Kyin while he took several more
turns up and down the room. When he spoke, it was more
seriously than before, and even with a touch of diffidence.

‘You know, Kin Kin, there is another matter behind all
this. Something that I have not told to you or to anyone
else. Even Ba Sein does not know. But I believe I will tell
it you now.’

‘I do not want to hear it, if it is more wickedness.’

‘No, no. You were asking just now what is my real
object in this affair. You think, I suppose, that I am ruining
Veraswami merely because I dislike him and his ideas about
bribes are a nuisance. It is not only that. There is something
else that is far more important, and it concerns you as well
as me.’

‘What is it?’

‘Have you never felt in you, Kin Kin, a desire for higher
things? Has it never struck you that after all our successes—all
my successes, I should say—we are almost in the same
position as when we started? I am worth, I dare say, two
lakhs of rupees, and yet look at the style in which we live!
Look at this room! Positively it is no better than that of a
peasant. I am tired of eating with my fingers and associating
only with Burmans—poor, inferior people—and
living, as you might say, like a miserable Township
Officer. Money is not enough; I should like to feel that I
have risen in the world as well. Do you not wish sometimes
for a way of life that is a little more—how shall I say—elevated?’

‘I do not know how we could want more than what we
have already. When I was a girl in my village I never
thought that I should live in such a house as this. Look at
those English chairs—I have never sat in one of them in my
life. But I am very proud to look at them and think that
I own them.’

‘Ch! Why did you ever leave that village of yours, Kin
Kin? You are only fit to stand gossiping by the well with
a stone water-pot on your head. But I am more ambitious,
God be praised. And now I will tell you the real reason
why I am intriguing against Veraswami. It is in my mind
to do something that is really magnificent. Something
noble, glorious! Something that is the very highest honour
an Oriental can attain to. You know what I mean, of
course?’

‘No. What do you mean?’

‘Come, now! The greatest achievement of my life!
Surely you can guess?’

‘Ah, I know! You are going to buy a motor-car. But
oh, Ko Po Kyin, please do not expect me to ride in it!’

U Po Kyin threw up his hands in disgust. ‘A motor-car!
You have the mind of a bazaar peanut-seller! I could buy
twenty motor-cars if I wanted them. And what use would
a motor-car be in this place? No, it is something far grander
than that.’

‘What, then?’

‘It is this. I happen to know that in a month’s time the
Europeans are going to elect one native member to their
Club. They do not want to do it, but they will have orders
from the Commissioner, and they will obey. Naturally,
they would elect Veraswami, who is the highest native
official in the district. But I have disgraced Veraswami.
And so——’

‘What?’

U Po Kyin did not answer for a moment. He looked
at Ma Kin, and his vast yellow face, with its broad jaw and
numberless teeth, was so softened that it was almost childlike.
There might even have been tears in his tawny eyes.
He said in a small, almost awed voice, as though the
greatness of what he was saying overcame him:

‘Do you not see, woman? Do you not see that if Veraswami
is disgraced I shall be elected to the Club myself?’

The effect of it was crushing. There was not another
word of argument on Ma Kin’s part. The magnificence of
U Po Kyin’s project had struck her dumb.

And not without reason, for all the achievements of U
Po Kyin’s life were as nothing beside this. It is a real
triumph—it would be doubly so in Kyauktada—for an
official of the lower ranks to worm his way into the
European Club. The European Club, that remote, mysterious
temple, that holy of holies far harder of entry than
Nirvana! Po Kyin, the naked gutter-boy of Mandalay, the
thieving clerk and obscure official, would enter that sacred
place, call Europeans ‘old chap’, drink whisky and soda and
knock white balls to and fro on the green table! Ma Kin,
the village woman, who had first seen the light through
the chinks of a bamboo hut thatched with palm leaves,
would sit on a high chair with her feet imprisoned in silk
stockings and high-heeled shoes (yes, she would actually
wear shoes in that place!) talking to English ladies in Hindustani
about baby-linen! It was a prospect that would have
dazzled anybody.

For a long time Ma Kin remained silent, her lips parted,
thinking of the European Club and the splendours that it
might contain. For the first time in her life she surveyed
U Po Kyin’s intrigues without disapproval. Perhaps it was
a feat greater even than the storming of the Club to have
planted a grain of ambition in Ma Kin’s gentle heart.

XIII

As Flory came through the gate of the hospital compound
four ragged sweepers passed him, carrying some
dead coolie, wrapped in sackcloth, to a foot-deep grave in
the jungle. Flory crossed the brick-like earth of the yard
between the hospital sheds. All down the wide verandas,
on sheetless charpoys, rows of grey-faced men lay silent
and moveless. Some filthy-looking curs, which were said
to devour amputated limbs, dozed or snapped at their fleas
among the piles of the buildings. The whole place wore
a sluttish and decaying air. Dr Veraswami struggled hard
to keep it clean, but there was no coping with the dust and
the bad water-supply, and the inertia of sweepers and half-trained
Assistant Surgeons.

Flory was told that the doctor was in the out-patients’
department. It was a plaster-walled room furnished only
with a table and two chairs, and a dusty portrait of Queen
Victoria, much awry. A procession of Burmans, peasants
with gnarled muscles beneath their faded rags, were filing
into the room and queueing up at the table. The doctor
was in shirt-sleeves and sweating profusely. He sprang to
his feet with an exclamation of pleasure, and in his usual
fussy haste thrust Flory into the vacant chair and produced
a tin of cigarettes from the drawer of the table.

‘What a delightful visit, Mr Flory! Please to make yourself
comfortable—that iss, if one can possibly be comfortable
in such a place ass this, ha, ha! Afterwards, at my
house, we will talk with beer and amenities. Kindly excuse
me while I attend to the populace.’

Flory sat down, and the hot sweat immediately burst out
and drenched his shirt. The heat of the room was stifling.
The peasants steamed garlic from all their pores. As each
man came to the table the doctor would bounce from his
chair, prod the patient in the back, lay a black ear to his
chest, fire off several questions in villainous Burmese, then
bounce back to the table and scribble a prescription. The
patients took the prescriptions across the yard to the Compounder,
who gave them bottles filled with water and
various vegetable dyes. The Compounder supported himself
largely by the sale of drugs, for the Government paid
him only twenty-five rupees a month. However, the
doctor knew nothing of this.

On most mornings the doctor had not time to attend
to the out-patients himself, and left them to one of the
Assistant Surgeons. The Assistant Surgeon’s methods of
diagnosis were brief. He would simply ask each patient,
‘Where is your pain? Head, back or belly?’ and at the reply
hand out a prescription from one of three piles that he had
prepared beforehand. The patients much preferred this
method to the doctor’s. The doctor had a way of asking
them whether they had suffered from venereal diseases—an
ungentlemanly, pointless question—and sometimes he
horrified them still more by suggesting operations. ‘Belly-cutting’
was their phrase for it. The majority of them
would have died a dozen times over rather than submit to
‘belly-cutting’.

As the last patient disappeared the doctor sank into his
chair, fanning his face with the prescription-pad.

‘Ach, this heat! Some mornings I think that never will
I get the smell of garlic out of my nose! It iss amazing to
me how their very blood becomes impregnated with it.
Are you not suffocated, Mr Flory? You English have the
sense of smell almost too highly developed. What torments
you must all suffer in our filthy East!’

‘Abandon your noses, all ye who enter here, what? They
might write that up over the Suez Canal. You seem busy
this morning?’

‘Ass ever. Ah but, my friend, how discouraging iss the
work of a doctor in this country! These villagers—dirty,
ignorant savages! Even to get them to come to hospital iss
all we can do, and they will die of gangrene or carry a
tumour ass large ass a melon for ten years rather than face
the knife. And such medicines ass their own so-called doctors
give to them! Herbs gathered under the new moon, tigers’
whiskers, rhinoceros horn, urine, menstrual blood! How
men can drink such compounds iss disgusting.’

‘Rather picturesque, all the same. You ought to compile
a Burmese pharmacopoeia, doctor. It would be almost as
good as Culpeper.’

‘Barbarous cattle, barbarous cattle,’ said the doctor,
beginning to struggle into his white coat. ‘Shall we go back
to my house? There iss beer and I trust a few fragments of
ice left. I have an operation at ten, strangulated hernia, very
urgent. Till then I am free.’

‘Yes. As a matter of fact there’s something I rather
wanted to talk to you about.’

They re-crossed the yard and climbed the steps of the
doctor’s veranda. The doctor, having felt in the ice-chest
and found that the ice was all melted to tepid water, opened
a bottle of beer and called fussily to the servants to set some
more bottles swinging in a cradle of wet straw. Flory was
standing looking over the veranda rail, with his hat still on.
The fact was that he had come here to utter an apology. He
had been avoiding the doctor for nearly a fortnight—since
the day, in fact, when he had set his name to the insulting
notice at the Club. But the apology had got to be uttered.
U Po Kyin was a very good judge of men, but he had erred
in supposing that two anonymous letters were enough to
scare Flory permanently away from his friend.

‘Look here, doctor, you know what I wanted to say?’

‘I? No.’

‘Yes, you do. It’s about that beastly trick I played on you
the other week. When Ellis put that notice on the Club
board and I signed my name to it. You must have heard
about it. I want to try and explain——’

‘No no, my friend, no no!’ The doctor was so distressed
that he sprang across the veranda and seized Flory by the
arm. ‘You shall not explain! Please never to mention it! I
understand perfectly—but most perfectly.’

‘No, you don’t understand. You couldn’t. You don’t
realise just what kind of pressure is put on one to make one
do things like that. There was nothing to make me sign
the notice. Nothing could have happened if I’d refused.
There’s no law telling us to be beastly to Orientals—quite
the contrary. But—it’s just that one daren’t be loyal to an
Oriental when it means going against the others. It doesn’t
do. If I’d stuck out against signing the notice I’d have been
in disgrace at the Club for a week or two. So I funked it,
as usual.’

‘Please, Mr Flory, please! Possitively you will make me
uncomfortable if you continue. Ass though I could not
make all allowances for your position!’

‘Our motto, you know, is, “In India, do as the English
do”.’

‘Of course, of course. And a most noble motto. “Hanging
together”, ass you call it. It iss the secret of your
superiority to we Orientals.’

‘Well, it’s never much use saying one’s sorry. But what
I did come here to say was that it shan’t happen again. In
fact——’

‘Now, now, Mr Flory, you will oblige me by saying no
more upon this subject. It iss all over and forgotten. Please
to drink up your beer before it becomes ass hot ass tea.
Also, I have a thing to tell you. You have not asked for
my news yet.’

‘Ah, your news. What is your news, by the way? How’s
everything been going all this time? How’s Ma Britannia?
Still moribund?’

‘Aha, very low, very low! But not so low ass I. I am in
deep waters, my friend.’

‘What? U Po Kyin again? Is he still libelling you?’

‘If he iss libelling me! This time it iss—well, it iss something
diabolical. My friend, you have heard of this
rebellion that is supposed to be on the point of breaking
out in the district?’

‘I’ve heard a lot of talk. Westfield’s been out bent on
slaughter, but I hear he can’t find any rebels. Only the usual
village Hampdens who won’t pay their taxes.’

‘Ah yes. Wretched fools! Do you know how much iss
the tax that most of them have refused to pay? Five rupees!
They will get tired of it and pay up presently. We have
this trouble every year. But ass for the rebellion—the so-called
rebellion, Mr Flory—I wish you to know that there
iss more in it than meets the eye.’

‘Oh? What?’

To Flory’s surprise the doctor made such a violent
gesture of anger that he spilled most of his beer. He put his
glass down on the veranda rail and burst out:

‘Go on. “That obscene trunk of humours, that swol’n
parcel of dropsies, that bolting-hutch of beastliness”—go
on. What’s he been up to now?’

‘A villainy unparalleled—’ and here the doctor outlined
the plot for a sham rebellion, very much as U Po Kyin had
explained it to Ma Kin. The only detail not known to him
was U Po Kyin’s intention of getting himself elected to the
European Club. The doctor’s face could not accurately be
said to flush, but it grew several shades blacker in his anger.
Flory was so astonished that he remained standing up.

‘The cunning old devil! Who’d have thought he had it
in him? But how did you manage to find all this out?’

‘Ah, I have a few friends left. But now do you see, my
friend, what ruin he iss preparing for me? Already he hass
calumniated me right and left. When this absurd rebellion
breaks out, he will do everything in his power to connect
my name with it. And I tell you that the slightest suspicion
of my loyalty could be ruin for me, ruin! If it were ever
breathed that I were even a sympathiser with this rebellion,
there iss an end of me.’

‘But, damn it, this is ridiculous! Surely you can defend
yourself somehow?’

‘How can I defend myself when I can prove nothing?
I know that all this iss true, but what use iss that? If I
demand a public inquiry, for every witness I produce U
Po Kyin would produce fifty. You do not realise the
influence of that man in the district. No one dare speak
against him.’

‘But why need you prove anything? Why not go to old
Macgregor and tell him about it? He’s a very fair-minded
old chap in his way. He’d hear you out.’

‘Useless, useless. You have not the mind of an intriguer,
Mr Flory. Qui s’excuse s’accuse, iss it not? It does not pay
to cry that there iss a conspiracy against one.’

‘Well, what are you going to do, then?’

‘There iss nothing I can do. Simply I must wait and hope
that my prestige will carry me through. In affairs like this,
where a native official’s reputation iss at stake, there iss no
question of proof, of evidence. All depends upon one’s
standing with the Europeans. If my standing iss good, they
will not believe it of me; if bad, they will believe it. Prestige
iss all.’

They were silent for a moment. Flory understood well
enough that ‘prestige iss all.’ He was used to these nebulous
conflicts, in which suspicion counts for more than proof,
and reputation for more than a thousand witnesses. A
thought came into his head, an uncomfortable, chilling
thought which would never have occurred to him three
weeks earlier. It was one of those moments when one sees
quite clearly what is one’s duty, and, with all the will in
the world to shirk it, feels certain that one must carry it out.
He said:

‘Suppose, for instance, you were elected to the Club?
Would that do your prestige any good?’

‘If I were elected to the Club! Ah, indeed, yes! The Club!
It iss a fortress impregnable. Once there, and no one would
listen to these tales about me any more than if it were about
you, or Mr Macgregor, or any other European gentleman.
But what hope have I that they will elect me after their
minds have been poisoned against me?’

‘Well now, look here, doctor, I tell you what. I’ll
propose your name at the next general meeting. I know
the question’s got to come up then, and if someone comes
forward with the name of a candidate, I dare say no one
except Ellis will blackball him. And in the meantime——’

‘Ah, my friend, my dear friend!’ The doctor’s emotion
caused him almost to choke. He seized Flory by the hand.
‘Ah, my friend, that iss noble! Truly it iss noble! But it iss
too much. I fear that you will be in trouble with your
European friends again. Mr Ellis, for example—would he
tolerate it that you propose my name?’

‘Oh, bother Ellis. But you must understand that I can’t
promise to get you elected. It depends on what Macgregor
says and what mood the others are in. It may all come to
nothing.’

The doctor was still holding Flory’s hand between his
own, which were plump and damp. The tears had actually
started into his eyes, and these, magnified by his spectacles,
beamed upon Flory like the liquid eyes of a dog.

‘Ah, my friend! If I should but be elected! What an end
to all my troubles! But, my friend, ass I said before, do not
be too rash in this matter. Beware of U Po Kyin! By now
he will have numbered you among hiss enemies. And even
for you hiss enmity can be a danger.’

‘I would not be too sure. He hass subtle ways to strike.
And for sure he will raise heaven and earth to keep me
from being elected to the Club. If you have a weak spot,
guard it, my friend. He will find it out. He strikes always
at the weakest spot.’

‘Like the crocodile,’ Flory suggested.

‘Like the crocodile,’ agreed the doctor gravely. ‘Ah but,
my friend, how gratifying to me if I should become a
member of your European Club! What an honour, to be
the associate of European gentlemen! But there iss one
other matter, Mr Flory, that I did not care to mention
before. It iss—I hope this iss clearly understood—that I
have no intention of using the Club in any way. Membership
iss all I desire. Even if I were elected, I should not, of
course, ever presume to come to the Club.’

‘Not come to the Club?’

‘No, no! Heaven forbid that I should force my society
upon the European gentlemen! Simply I should pay my
subscriptions. That, for me, iss a privilege high enough.
You understand that, I trust?’

‘Perfectly, doctor, perfectly.’

Flory could not help laughing as he walked up the hill.
He was definitely committed now to proposing the
doctor’s election. And there would be such a row when the
others heard of it—oh, such a devil of a row! But the
astonishing thing was that it only made him laugh. The
prospect that would have appalled him a month back now
almost exhilarated him.

Why? And why had he given his promise at all? It was
a small thing, a small risk to take—nothing heroic about
it—and yet it was unlike him. Why, after all these years—the
circumspect, pukka sahib-like years—break all the rules
so suddenly?

He knew why. It was because Elizabeth, by coming into
his life, had so changed it and renewed it that all the dirty,
miserable years might never have passed. Her presence had
changed the whole orbit of his mind. She had brought back
to him the air of England—dear England, where thought
is free and one is not condemned forever to dance the danse
du pukka sahib for the edification of the lower races. Where
is the life that late I led? he thought. Just by existing she had
made it possible for him, she had even made it natural to
him, to act decently.

Where is the life that late I led? he thought again as he
came through the garden gate. He was happy, happy. For
he had perceived that the pious ones are right when they
say that there is salvation and life can begin anew. He came
up the path, and it seemed to him that his house, his
flowers, his servants, all the life that so short a time ago had
been drenched in ennui and homesickness, were somehow
made new, significant, beautiful inexhaustibly. What fun
it could all be, if only you had someone to share it with
you! How you could love this country, if only you were
not alone! Nero was out on the path, braving the sun for
some grains of paddy that the mali had dropped, taking
food to his goats. Flo made a dash at him, panting, and
Nero sprang into the air with a flurry and lighted on
Flory’s shoulder. Flory walked into the house with the little
red cock in his arms, stroking his silky ruff and the smooth,
diamond-shaped feathers of his back.

He had not set foot on the veranda before he knew that
Ma Hla May was in the house. It did not need Ko S’la to
come hurrying from within with a face of evil tidings.
Flory had smelled her scent of sandalwood, garlic, coco-nut
oil and the jasmine in her hair. He dropped Nero over
the veranda rail.

‘The woman has come back,’ said Ko S’la.

Flory had turned very pale. When he turned pale the
birthmark made him hideously ugly. A pang like a blade
of ice had gone through his entrails. Ma Hla May had
appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. She stood with
her face downcast, looking at him from beneath lowered
brows.

‘Thakin,’ she said in a low voice, half sullen, half urgent.

‘Go away!’ said Flory angrily to Ko S’la, venting his fear
and anger upon him.

‘Thakin,’ she said, ‘come into the bedroom here. I have
a thing to say to you.’

He followed her into the bedroom. In a week—it was
only a week—her appearance had degenerated extraordinarily.
Her hair looked greasy. All her lockets were
gone, and she was wearing a Manchester longyi of flowered
cotton, costing two rupees eight annas. She had coated
her face so thick with powder that it was like a clown’s
mask, and at the roots of her hair, where the powder ended,
there was a ribbon of natural-coloured brown skin. She
looked a drab. Flory would not face her, but stood looking
sullenly through the open doorway to the veranda.

‘What do you mean by coming back like this? Why did
you not go home to your village?’

‘I am staying in Kyauktada, at my cousin’s house. How
can I go back to my village after what has happened?’

‘And what do you mean by sending men to demand
money from me? How can you want more money already,
when I gave you a hundred rupees only a week
ago?’

‘How can I go back?’ she repeated, ignoring what he had
said. Her voice rose so sharply that he turned round. She
was standing very upright, sullen, with her black brows
drawn together and her lips pouted.

‘Why cannot you go back?’

‘After that! After what you have done to me!’

Suddenly she burst into a furious tirade. Her voice had
risen to the hysterical graceless scream of the bazaar women
when they quarrel.

‘How can I go back, to be jeered at and pointed at by
those low, stupid peasants whom I despise? I who have
been a bo-kadaw, a white man’s wife, to go home to my
father’s house, and shake the paddy basket with old hags
and women who are too ugly to find husbands! Ah, what
shame, what shame! Two years I was your wife, you loved
me and cared for me, and then without warning, without
reason, you drove me from your door like a dog. And I
must go back to my village, with no money, with all my
jewels and silk longyis gone, and the people will point and
say, “There is Ma Hla May who thought herself cleverer
than the rest of us. And behold! her white man has treated
her as they always do.” I am ruined, ruined! What man will
marry me after I have lived two years in your house? You
have taken my youth from me. Ah, what shame, what
shame!’

He could not look at her; he stood helpless, pale, hangdog.
Every word she said was justified, and how tell her
that he could do no other than he had done? How tell her
that it would have been an outrage, a sin, to continue as
her lover? He almost cringed from her, and the birthmark
stood on his yellow face like a splash of ink. He said flatly,
turning instinctively to money—for money had never
failed with Ma Hla May:

‘I will give you money. You shall have the fifty rupees you
asked me for—more later. I have no more till next month.’

This was true. The hundred rupees he had given her, and
what he had spent on clothes, had taken most of his ready
money. To his dismay she burst into a loud wail. Her white
mask puckered up and the tears sprang quickly out and
coursed down her cheeks. Before he could stop her she had
fallen on her knees in front of him, and she was bowing,
touching the floor with her forehead in the ‘full’ shiko of
utter abasement.

‘Get up, get up!’ he exclaimed. The shameful, abject
shiko, neck bent, body doubled up as though inviting a
blow, always horrified him. ‘I can’t bear that. Get up this
instant.’

She wailed again, and made an attempt to clasp his
ankles. He stepped backwards hurriedly.

‘Get up, now, and stop that dreadful noise. I don’t know
what you are crying about.’

She did not get up, but only rose to her knees and wailed
at him anew. ‘Why do you offer me money? Do you think
it is only for money that I have come back? Do you think
that when you have driven me from your door like a dog
it is only because of money that I care?’

‘Get up,’ he repeated. He had moved several paces away,
lest she should seize him. ‘What do you want if it is not
money?’

‘Why do you hate me?’ she wailed. ‘What harm have
I done you? I stole your cigarette-case, but you were not
angry at that. You are going to marry this white woman,
I know it, everyone knows it. But what does it matter,
why must you turn me away? Why do you hate me?’

‘I don’t hate you. I can’t explain. Get up, please get up.’

She was weeping quite shamelessly now. After all, she
was hardly more than a child. She looked at him through
her tears, anxiously, studying him for a sign of mercy.
Then, a dreadful thing, she stretched herself at full length,
flat on her face.

She did not get up, but crept, wormlike, right across the
floor to his feet. Her body made a broad ribbon on the
dusty floor. She lay prostrate in front of him, face hidden,
arms extended, as though before a god’s altar.

‘Master, master,’ she whimpered, ‘will you not forgive
me? This once, only this once! Take Ma Hla May back.
I will be your slave, lower than your slave. Anything
sooner than turn me away.’

She had wound her arms round his ankles, actually was
kissing his shoes. He stood looking down at her with his
hands in his pockets, helpless. Flo came ambling into the
room, walked to where Ma Hla May lay and sniffed at her
longyi. She wagged her tail vaguely, recognising the smell.
Flory could not endure it. He bent down and took Ma Hla
May by the shoulders, lifting her to her knees.

‘Stand up, now,’ he said. ‘It hurts me to see you
like this. I will do what I can for you. What is the use of
crying?’

Instantly she cried out in renewed hope: ‘Then you will
take me back? Oh, master, take Ma Hla May back! No one
need ever know. I will stay here when that white woman
comes, she will think I am one of the servants’ wives. Will
you not take me back?’

‘I cannot. It’s impossible,’ he said, turning away again.

She heard finality in his tone, and uttered a harsh, ugly
cry. She bent forward again in a shiko, beating her forehead
against the floor. It was dreadful. And what was more
dreadful than all, what hurt him in his breast, was the utter
gracelessness, the lowness of the emotion beneath these
entreaties. For in all this there was not a spark of love for
him. If she wept and grovelled it was only for the position
she had once had as his mistress, the idle life, the rich clothes
and dominion over servants. There was something pitiful
beyond words in that. Had she loved him he could have
driven her from his door with far less compunction. No
sorrows are so bitter as those that are without a trace of
nobility. He bent down and picked her up in his arms.

‘Listen, Ma Hla May,’ he said; ‘I do not hate you, you
have done me no evil. It is I who have wronged you. But
there is no help for it now. You must go home, and later
I will send you money. If you like you shall start a shop
in the bazaar. You are young. This will not matter to you
when you have money and can find yourself a husband.’

‘I am ruined!’ she wailed again. ‘I shall kill myself. I shall
jump off the jetty into the river. How can I live after this
disgrace?’

He was holding her in his arms, almost caressing her. She
was clinging close to him, her face hidden against his shirt,
her body shaking with sobs. The scent of sandalwood
floated into his nostrils. Perhaps even now she thought that
with her arms round him and her body against his she
could renew her power over him. He disentangled himself
gently, and then, seeing that she did not fall on her knees
again, stood apart from her.

‘That is enough. You must go now. And look, I will
give you the fifty rupees I promised you.’

He dragged his tin uniform case from under the bed and
took out five ten-rupee notes. She stowed them silently in
the bosom of her ingyi. Her tears had ceased flowing quite
suddenly. Without speaking she went into the bathroom
for a moment, and came out with her face washed to its
natural brown, and her hair and dress rearranged. She
looked sullen, but not hysterical any longer.

‘For the last time, thakin: you will not take me back?
That is your last word?’

‘Yes. I cannot help it.’

‘Then I am going, thakin.’

‘Very well. God go with you.’

Leaning against the wooden pillar of the veranda, he
watched her walk down the path in the strong sunlight.
She walked very upright, with bitter offence in the carriage
of her back and head. It was true what she had said, he had
robbed her of her youth. His knees were trembling uncontrollably.
Ko S’la came behind him, silent-footed. He
gave a little deprecating cough to attract Flory’s attention.

‘What’s the matter now?’

‘The holy one’s breakfast is getting cold.’

‘I don’t want any breakfast. Get me something to drink—gin.’

Where is the life that late I led?

XIV

Like long curved needles threading through embroidery,
the two canoes that carried Flory and Elizabeth threaded
their way up the creek that led inland from the eastern
bank of the Irrawaddy. It was the day of the shooting
trip—a short afternoon trip, for they could not stay a night
in the jungle together. They were to shoot for a couple
of hours in the comparative cool of the evening, and be
back at Kyauktada in time for dinner.

The canoes, each hollowed out of a single tree-trunk,
glided swiftly, hardly rippling the dark brown water.
Water hyacinth with profuse spongy foliage and blue
flowers had choked the stream so that the channel was only
a winding ribbon four feet wide. The light filtered, greenish,
through interlacing boughs. Sometimes one could hear
parrots scream overhead, but no wild creatures showed
themselves, except once a snake that swam hurriedly away
and disappeared among the water hyacinth.

‘How long before we get to the village?’ Elizabeth called
back to Flory. He was in a larger canoe behind, together
with Flo and Ko S’la, paddled by a wrinkly old woman
dressed in rags.

‘How far, grandmama?’ Flory asked the canoewoman.

The old woman took her cigar out of her mouth and
rested her paddle on her knees to think. ‘The distance a man
can shout,’ she said after reflection.

‘About half a mile,’ Flory translated.

They had come two miles. Elizabeth’s back was aching.
The canoes were liable to upset at a careless movement, and
you had to sit bolt upright on the narrow backless seat,
keeping your feet as well as possible out of the bilge, with
dead prawns in it, that sagged to and fro at the bottom.
The Burman who paddled Elizabeth was sixty years old,
half naked, leaf-brown, with a body as perfect as that of
a young man. His face was battered, gentle and humorous.
His black cloud of hair, finer than that of most Burmans,
was knotted loosely over one ear, with a wisp or two
tumbling across his cheek. Elizabeth was nursing her
uncle’s gun across her knees. Flory had offered to take it,
but she had refused; in reality, the feel of it delighted her
so much that she could not bring herself to give it up. She
had never had a gun in her hand until today. She was
wearing a rough skirt with brogue shoes and a silk shirt like
a man’s, and she knew that with her Terai hat they looked
well on her. She was very happy, in spite of her aching back
and the hot sweat that tickled her face, and the large,
speckled mosquitoes that hummed round her ankles.

The stream narrowed and the beds of water hyacinth
gave place to steep banks of glistening mud, like chocolate.
Rickety thatched huts leaned far out over the stream, their
piles driven into its bed. A naked boy was standing between
two of the huts, flying a green beetle on a piece of
thread like a kite. He yelled at the sight of the Europeans,
whereat more children appeared from nowhere. The old
Burman guided the canoe to a jetty made of a single palm-trunk
laid in the mud—it was covered with barnacles and
so gave foothold—and sprang out and helped Elizabeth
ashore. The others followed with the bags and cartridges,
and Flo, as she always did on these occasions, fell into the
mud and sank as deep as the shoulder. A skinny old
gentleman wearing a magenta paso, with a mole on his
cheek from which four yard-long grey hairs sprouted,
came forward shikoing and cuffing the heads of the
children who had gathered round the jetty.

‘The village headman,’ Flory said.

The old man led the way to his house, walking ahead
with an extraordinary crouching gait, like a letter L upside
down—the result of rheumatism combined with the
constant shikoing needed in a minor Government official.
A mob of children marched rapidly after the Europeans,
and more and more dogs, all yapping and causing Flo to
shrink against Flory’s heels. In the doorway of every hut
clusters of moon-like, rustic faces gaped at the ‘Ingaleikma’.
The village was darkish under the shade of broad leaves.
In the rains the creek would flood, turning the lower parts
of the village into a squalid wooden Venice where the
villagers stepped from their front doors into their canoes.

The headman’s house was a little bigger than the others,
and it had a corrugated iron roof, which, in spite of the
intolerable din it made during the rains, was the pride of the
headman’s life. He had forgone the building of a pagoda,
and appreciably lessened his chances of Nirvana, to pay for
it. He hastened up the steps and gently kicked in the ribs
a youth who was lying asleep on the veranda. Then he
turned and shikoed again to the Europeans, asking them
to come inside.

‘Shall we go in?’ Flory said. ‘I expect we shall have to
wait half an hour.’

‘Couldn’t you tell him to bring some chairs out on the
veranda?’ Elizabeth said. After her experience in Li Yeik’s
house she had privately decided that she would never go
inside a native house again, if she could help it.

There was a fuss inside the house, and the headman, the
youth and some women dragged forth two chairs
decorated in an extraordinary manner with red hibiscus
flowers, and also some begonias growing in kerosene tins.
It was evident that a sort of double throne had been
prepared within for the Europeans. When Elizabeth had sat
down the headman reappeared with a teapot, a bunch of
very long, bright green bananas, and six coal-black
cheroots. But when he had poured her out a cup of tea
Elizabeth shook her head, for the tea looked, if possible,
worse even than Li Yeik’s.

The headman looked abashed and rubbed his nose. He
turned to Flory and asked him whether the young thakin-ma
would like some milk in her tea. He had heard that
Europeans drank milk in their tea. The villagers should, if
it were desired, catch a cow and milk it. However, Elizabeth
still refused the tea; but she was thirsty, and she asked
Flory to send for one of the bottles of soda-water that Ko
S’la had brought in his bag. Seeing this, the headman
retired, feeling guiltily that his preparations had been insufficient,
and left the veranda to the Europeans.

Elizabeth was still nursing her gun on her knees, while
Flory leaned against the veranda rail pretending to smoke
one of the headman’s cheroots. Elizabeth was pining for the
shooting to begin. She plied Flory with innumerable questions.

‘How soon can we start out? Do you think we’ve got
enough cartridges? How many beaters shall we take? Oh,
I do so hope we have some luck! You do think we’ll get
something, don’t you?’

‘Nothing wonderful, probably. We’re bound to get a
few pigeons, and perhaps jungle fowl. They’re out of
season, but it doesn’t matter shooting the cocks. They say
there’s a leopard round here, that killed a bullock almost
in the village last week.’

‘Oh, a leopard! How lovely if we could shoot it!’

‘It’s very unlikely, I’m afraid. The only rule with this
shooting in Burma is to hope for nothing. It’s invariably
disappointing. The jungles teem with game, but as often
as not you don’t even get a chance to fire your gun.’

‘Why is that?’

‘The jungle is so thick. An animal may be five yards
away and quite invisible, and half the time they manage
to dodge back past the beaters. Even when you see them
it’s only for a flash of a second. And again, there’s water
everywhere, so that no animal is tied down to one particular
spot. A tiger, for instance, will roam hundreds of
miles if it suits him. And with all the game there is, they
need never come back to a kill if there’s anything suspicious
about it. Night after night, when I was a boy, I’ve sat up
over horrible stinking dead cows, waiting for tigers that
never came.’

Elizabeth wriggled her shoulder-blades against the chair.
It was a movement that she made sometimes when she was
deeply pleased. She loved Flory, really loved him, when
he talked like this. The most trivial scrap of information
about shooting thrilled her. If only he would always talk
about shooting, instead of about books and Art and that
mucky poetry! In a sudden burst of admiration she decided
that Flory was really quite a handsome man, in his way.
He looked so splendidly manly, with his pagri-cloth shirt
open at the throat, and his shorts and puttees and shooting
boots! And his face, lined, sunburned, like a soldier’s face.
He was standing with his birthmarked cheek away from
her. She pressed him to go on talking.

‘Do tell me some more about tiger-shooting. It’s so
awfully interesting!’

He described the shooting, years ago, of a mangy old
man-eater who had killed one of his coolies. The wait in
the mosquito-ridden machan; the tiger’s eyes approaching
through the dark jungle, like great green lanterns; the
panting, slobbering noise as he devoured the coolie’s body,
tied to a stake below. Flory told it all perfunctorily enough—did
not the proverbial Anglo-Indian bore always talk
about tiger-shooting?—but Elizabeth wriggled her
shoulders delightedly once more. He did not realise how
such talk as this reassured her and made up for all the times
when he had bored her and disquieted her. Six shock-headed
youths came down the path, carrying dahs over
their shoulders, and headed by a stringy but active old man
with grey hair. They halted in front of the headman’s
house, and one of them uttered a hoarse whoop, whereat
the headman appeared and explained that these were the
beaters. They were ready to start now, if the young thakin-ma
did not find it too hot.

They set out. The side of the village away from the creek
was protected by a hedge of cactus six feet high and twelve
thick. One went up a narrow lane of cactus, then along a
rutted, dusty bullock-cart track, with bamboos as tall as
flagstaffs growing densely on either side. The beaters
marched rapidly ahead in single file, each with his broad
dah laid along his forearm. The old hunter was marching
just in front of Elizabeth. His longyi was hitched up like a
loincloth, and his meagre thighs were tattooed with dark
blue patterns, so intricate that he might have been wearing
drawers of blue lace. A bamboo the thickness of a man’s
wrist had fallen and hung across the path. The leading beater
severed it with an upward flick of his dah; the prisoned
water gushed out of it with a diamond-flash. After half a
mile they reached the open fields, and everyone was sweating,
for they had walked fast and the sun was savage.

‘That’s where we’re going to shoot, over there,’ Flory
said.

He pointed across the stubble, a wide dust-coloured
plain, cut up into patches of an acre or two by mud
boundaries. It was horribly flat, and lifeless save for the
snowy egrets. At the far edge a jungle of great trees rose
abruptly, like a dark green cliff. The beaters had gone
across to a small tree like a hawthorn twenty yards away.
One of them was on his knees, shikoing to the tree and
gabbling, while the old hunter poured a bottle of some
cloudy liquid onto the ground. The others stood looking
on with serious, bored faces, like men in church.

‘What are those men doing?’ Elizabeth said.

‘Only sacrificing to the local gods. Nats, they call them—a
kind of dryad. They’re praying to him to bring us
good luck.’

The hunter came back and in a cracked voice explained
that they were to beat a small patch of scrub over to the
right before proceeding to the main jungle. Apparently the
Nat had counselled this. The hunter directed Flory and
Elizabeth where to stand, pointing with his dah. The six
beaters plunged into the scrub; they would make a detour
and beat back towards the paddy fields. There were some
bushes of the wild rose thirty yards from the jungle’s edge,
and Flory and Elizabeth took cover behind one of these,
while Ko S’la squatted down behind another bush a little
distance away, holding Flo’s collar and stroking her to keep
her quiet. Flory always sent Ko S’la to a distance when he
was shooting, for he had an irritating trick of clicking his
tongue if a shot was missed. Presently there was a far-off
echoing sound—a sound of tapping and strange hollow
cries; the beat had started. Elizabeth at once began trembling
so uncontrollably that she could not keep her gun-barrel
still. A wonderful bird, a little bigger than a thrush,
with grey wings and body of blazing scarlet, broke from
the trees and came towards them with a dipping flight. The
tapping and the cries came nearer. One of the bushes at the
jungle’s edge waved violently—some large animal was
emerging. Elizabeth raised her gun and tried to steady it.
But it was only a naked yellow beater, dah in hand. He saw
that he had emerged and shouted to the others to join him.

Elizabeth lowered her gun. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing. The beat’s over.’

‘So there was nothing there!’ she cried in bitter disappointment.

‘Never mind, one never gets anything the first beat.
We’ll have better luck next time.’

They crossed the lumpy stubble, climbing over the mud
boundaries that divided the fields, and took up their position
opposite the high green wall of the jungle. Elizabeth
had already learned how to load her gun. This time the beat
had hardly started when Ko S’la whistled sharply.

‘Look out!’ Flory cried. ‘Quick, here they come!’

A flight of green pigeons were dashing towards them at
incredible speed, forty yards up. They were like a handful
of catapulted stones whirling through the sky. Elizabeth
was helpless with excitement. For a moment she could not
move, then she flung her barrel into the air, somewhere in
the direction of the birds, and tugged violently at the
trigger. Nothing happened—she was pulling at the
trigger-guard. Just as the birds passed overhead she found
the triggers and pulled both of them simultaneously. There
was a deafening roar and she was thrown backwards a pace
with her collar-bone almost broken. She had fired thirty
yards behind the birds. At the same moment she saw Flory
turn and level his gun. Two of the pigeons, suddenly
checked in their flight, swirled over and dropped to the
ground like arrows. Ko S’la yelled, and he and Flo raced
after them.

‘Look out!’ said Flory, ‘here’s an imperial pigeon. Let’s
have him!’

A large heavy bird, with flight much slower than the
others, was flapping overhead. Elizabeth did not care to fire
after her previous failure. She watched Flory thrust a
cartridge into the breech and raise his gun, and the white
plume of smoke leapt up from the muzzle. The bird planed
heavily down, his wing broken. Flo and Ko S’la came
running excitedly up, Flo with the big imperial pigeon in
her mouth, and Ko S’la grinning and producing two green
pigeons from his Kachin bag.

Flory took one of the little green corpses to show to
Elizabeth. ‘Look at it. Aren’t they lovely things? The most
beautiful bird in Asia.’

Elizabeth touched its smooth feathers with her finger tip.
It filled her with bitter envy, because she had not shot it.
And yet it was curious, but she felt almost an adoration for
Flory now that she had seen how he could shoot.

‘Just look at its breast-feathers; like a jewel. It’s murder
to shoot them. The Burmese say that when you kill one
of these birds they vomit, meaning to say, “Look, here is
all I possess, and I’ve taken nothing of yours. Why do you
kill me?” I’ve never seen one do it, I must admit.’

‘Are they good to eat?’

‘Very. Even so, I always feel it’s a shame to kill them.’

‘I wish I could do it like you do!’ she said enviously.

‘It’s only a knack, you’ll soon pick it up. You know how
to hold your gun, and that’s more than most people do
when they start.’

However, at the next two beats, Elizabeth could hit
nothing. She had learned not to fire both barrels at once,
but she was too paralysed with excitement ever to take
aim. Flory shot several more pigeons, and a small bronze-wing
dove with back as green as verdigris. The jungle fowl
were too cunning to show themselves, though one could
hear them cluck-clucking all round, and once or twice the
sharp trumpet-call of a cock. They were getting deeper
into the jungle now. The light was greyish, with dazzling
patches of sunlight. Whichever way one looked one’s view
was shut in by the multitudinous ranks of trees, and the
tangled bushes and creepers that struggled round their bases
like the sea round the piles of a pier. It was so dense, like
a bramble bush extending mile after mile, that one’s eyes
were oppressed by it. Some of the creepers were huge, like
serpents. Flory and Elizabeth struggled along narrow
game-tracks, up slippery banks, thorns tearing at their
clothes. Both their shirts were drenched with sweat. It was
stifling hot, with a scent of crushed leaves. Sometimes for
minutes together invisible cicadas would keep up a shrill,
metallic pinging like the twanging of a steel guitar, and
then, by stopping, make a silence that startled one.

As they were walking to the fifth beat they came to a
great peepul tree in which, high up, one could hear
imperial pigeons cooing. It was a sound like the far-off
lowing of cows. One bird fluttered out and perched alone
on the topmost bough, a small greyish shape.

‘Try a sitting shot,’ Flory said to Elizabeth. ‘Get your
sight on him and pull off without waiting. Don’t shut your
left eye.’

Elizabeth raised her gun, which had begun trembling as
usual. The beaters halted in a group to watch, and some
of them could not refrain from clicking their tongues; they
thought it queer and rather shocking to see a woman
handle a gun. With a violent effort of will Elizabeth kept
her gun still for a second, and pulled the trigger. She did
not hear the shot; one never does when it has gone home.
The bird seemed to jump upwards from the bough, then
down it came, tumbling over and over, and stuck in a fork
ten yards up. One of the beaters laid down his dah and
glanced appraisingly at the tree; then he walked to a great
creeper, thick as a man’s thigh and twisted like a stick of
barley sugar, that hung far out from a bough. He ran up the
creeper as easily as though it had been a ladder, walked upright
along the broad bough, and brought the pigeon to
the ground. He put it limp and warm into Elizabeth’s hand.

She could hardly give it up, the feel of it so ravished her.
She could have kissed it, hugged it to her breast. All the
men, Flory and Ko S’la and the beaters, smiled at one
another to see her fondling the dead bird. Reluctantly, she
gave it to Ko S’la to put in the bag. She was conscious of
an extraordinary desire to fling her arms round Flory’s
neck and kiss him; and in some way it was the killing of
the pigeon that made her feel this.

After the fifth beat the hunter explained to Flory that
they must cross a clearing that was used for growing
pineapples, and would beat another patch of jungle
beyond. They came out into sunlight, dazzling after the
jungle gloom. The clearing was an oblong of an acre or
two hacked out of the jungle like a patch mown in long
grass, with the pineapples, prickly cactus-like plants, growing
in rows, almost smothered by weeds. A low hedge of
thorns divided the field in the middle. They had nearly
crossed the field when there was a sharp cock-a-doodle-doo
from beyond the hedge.

‘Oh, listen!’ said Elizabeth, stopping. ‘Was that a jungle
cock?’

‘Yes. They come out to feed about this time.’

‘Couldn’t we go and shoot him?’

‘We’ll have a try if you like. They’re cunning beggars.
Look, we’ll stalk up the hedge until we get opposite
where he is. We’ll have to go without making a sound.’

He sent Ko S’la and the beaters on, and the two of them
skirted the field and crept along the hedge. They had to
bend double to keep themselves out of sight. Elizabeth was
in front. The hot sweat trickled down her face, tickling her
upper lip, and her heart was knocking violently. She felt
Flory touch her heel from behind. Both of them stood
upright and looked over the hedge together.

Ten yards away a little cock the size of a bantam, was
pecking vigorously at the ground. He was beautiful, with
his long silky neck-feathers, bunched comb and arching,
laurel-green tail. There were six hens with him, smaller
brown birds, with diamond-shaped feathers like snake-scales
on their backs. All this Elizabeth and Flory saw in the
space of a second, then with a squawk and a whirr the birds
were up and flying like bullets for the jungle. Instantly,
automatically as it seemed, Elizabeth raised her gun and
fired. It was one of those shots where there is no aiming,
no consciousness of the gun in one’s hand, when one’s
mind seems to fly behind the charge and drive it to the
mark. She knew the bird was doomed even before she
pulled the trigger. He tumbled, showering feathers thirty
yards away. ‘Good shot, good shot!’ cried Flory. In their
excitement both of them dropped their guns, broke
through the thorn hedge and raced side by side to where
the bird lay.

‘Good shot!’ Flory repeated, as excited as she. ‘By Jove,
I’ve never seen anyone kill a flying bird their first day, never!
You got your gun off like lightning. It’s marvellous!’

They were kneeling face to face with the dead bird
between them. With a shock they discovered that their
hands, his right and her left, were clasped tightly together.
They had run to the place hand in hand without noticing
it.

A sudden stillness came on them both, a sense of something
momentous that must happen. Flory reached across
and took her other hand. It came yieldingly, willingly. For
a moment they knelt with their hands clasped together.
The sun blazed upon them and the warmth breathed out
of their bodies; they seemed to be floating upon clouds of
heat and joy. He took her by the upper arms to draw her
towards him.

Then suddenly he turned his head away and stood up,
pulling Elizabeth to her feet. He let go of her arms. He had
remembered his birthmark. He dared not do it. Not here,
not in daylight! The snub it invited was too terrible. To
cover the awkwardness of the moment he bent down and
picked up the jungle cock.

‘It was splendid,’ he said. ‘You don’t need any teaching.
You can shoot already. We’d better get on to the next
beat.’

They had just crossed the hedge and picked up their guns
when there was a series of shouts from the edge of the
jungle. Two of the beaters were running towards them
with enormous leaps, waving their arms wildly in the air.

‘What is it?’ Elizabeth said.

‘I don’t know. They’ve seen some animal or other.
Something good, by the look of them.’

‘Oh, hurrah! Come on!’

They broke into a run and hurried across the field,
breaking through the pineapples and the stiff prickly
weeds. Ko S’la and five of the beaters were standing in a
knot all talking at once, and the other two were beckoning
excitedly to Flory and Elizabeth. As they came up they saw
in the middle of the group an old woman who was holding
up her ragged longyi with one hand and gesticulating with
a big cigar in the other. Elizabeth could hear some word
that sounded like Char repeated over and over again.

‘What is it they’re saying?’ she said.

The beaters came crowding round Flory, all talking
eagerly and pointing into the jungle. After a few questions
he waved his hand to silence them and turned to Elizabeth:

‘I say, here’s a bit of luck! This old girl was coming
through the jungle, and she says that at the sound of the
shot you fired just now, she saw a leopard run across the
path. These fellows know where he’s likely to hide. If we’re
quick they may be able to surround him before he sneaks
away, and drive him out. Shall we try it?’

‘Oh, do let’s! Oh, what awful fun! How lovely, how
lovely if we could get that leopard!’

‘You understand it’s dangerous? We’ll keep close together
and it’ll probably be all right, but it’s never absolutely
safe on foot. Are you ready for that?’

‘Oh, of course, of course! I’m not frightened. Oh, do
let’s be quick and start!’

‘One of you come with us and show us the way,’ he
said to the beaters. ‘Ko S’la, put Flo on the leash and go
with the others. She’ll never keep quiet with us. We’ll have
to hurry,’ he added to Elizabeth.

Ko S’la and the beaters hurried off along the edge of the
jungle. They would strike in and begin beating further up.
The other beater, the same youth who had climbed the tree
after the pigeon, dived into the jungle, Flory and Elizabeth
following. With short rapid steps, almost running, he led
them through a labyrinth of game-tracks. The bushes
trailed so low that sometimes one had almost to crawl, and
creepers hung across the path like trip-wires. The ground
was dusty and silent underfoot. At some landmark in the
jungle the beater halted, pointed to the ground as a sign that
this spot would do, and put his finger on his lips to enjoin
silence. Flory took four SG cartridges from his pockets and
took Elizabeth’s gun to load it silently.

There was a faint rustling behind them, and they all
started. A nearly naked youth with a pellet-bow, come
goodness knows whence, had parted the bushes. He looked
at the beater, shook his head and pointed up the path. There
was a dialogue of signs between the two youths, then the
beater seemed to agree. Without speaking all four stole
forty yards along the path, round a bend, and halted again.
At the same moment a frightful pandemonium of yells,
punctuated by barks from Flo, broke out a few hundred
yards away.

Elizabeth felt the beater’s hand on her shoulder, pushing
her downwards. They all four squatted down under cover
of a prickly bush, the Europeans in front, the Burmans
behind. In the distance there was such a tumult of yells and
the rattle of dahs against tree-trunks that one could hardly
believe six men could make so much noise. The beaters
were taking good care that the leopard should not turn
back upon them. Elizabeth watched some large, pale-yellow
ants marching like soldiers over the thorns of the
bush. One fell on to her hand and crawled up her forearm.
She dared not move to brush it away. She was praying
silently, ‘Please God, let the leopard come! Oh please, God,
let the leopard come!’

There was a sudden loud pattering on the leaves. Elizabeth
raised her gun, but Flory shook his head sharply and
pushed the barrel down again. A jungle fowl scuttled across
the path with long noisy strides.

The yells of the beaters seemed hardly to come any
closer, and at this end of the jungle the silence was like a
pall. The ant on Elizabeth’s arm bit her painfully and
dropped to the ground. A dreadful despair had begun to
form in her heart; the leopard was not coming, he had
slipped away somewhere, they had lost him. She almost
wished they had never heard of the leopard, the disappointment
was so agonising. Then she felt the beater pinch her
elbow. He was craning his face forward, his smooth, dull-yellow
cheek only a few inches from her own; she could
smell the coco-nut oil in his hair. His coarse lips were
puckered as in a whistle; he had heard something. Then
Flory and Elizabeth heard it too, the faintest whisper, as
though some creature of air were gliding through the
jungle, just brushing the ground with its foot. At the same
moment the leopard’s head and shoulders emerged from
the undergrowth, fifteen yards down the path.

He stopped with his forepaws on the path. They could
see his low, flat-eared head, his bared eye-tooth and his
thick, terrible forearm. In the shadow he did not look
yellow but grey. He was listening intently. Elizabeth saw
Flory spring to his feet, raise his gun and pull the trigger
instantly. The shot roared, and almost simultaneously there
was a heavy crash as the brute dropped flat in the weeds.
‘Look out!’ Flory cried, ‘he’s not done for!’ He fired again,
and there was a fresh thump as the shot went home. The
leopard gasped. Flory threw open his gun and felt in his
pocket for a cartridge, then flung all his cartridges onto the
path and fell on his knees, searching rapidly among them.

‘Damn and blast it!’ he cried. ‘There isn’t a single SG
among them. Where in hell did I put them?’

The leopard had disappeared as he fell. He was thrashing
about in the undergrowth like a great wounded snake, and
crying out with a snarling, sobbing noise, savage and
pitiful. The noise seemed to be coming nearer. Every
cartridge Flory turned up had 6 or 8 marked on the end.
The rest of the large-shot cartridges had, in fact, been left
with Ko S’la. The crashing and snarling were now hardly
five yards away, but they could see nothing, the jungle was
so thick.

The two Burmans were crying out ‘Shoot! Shoot!
Shoot!’ The sound of ‘Shoot! Shoot!’ got further away—they
were skipping for the nearest climbable trees. There
was a crash in the undergrowth so close that it shook the
bush by which Elizabeth was standing.

‘By God, he’s almost on us!’ Flory said. ‘We must turn
him somehow. Let fly at the sound.’

Elizabeth raised her gun. Her knees were knocking like
castanets, but her hand was as steady as stone. She fired
rapidly, once, twice. The crashing noise receded. The leopard
was crawling away, crippled but swift, and still invisible.

‘Well done! You’ve scared him,’ Flory said.

‘But he’s getting away! He’s getting away!’ Elizabeth
cried, dancing about in agitation. She made to follow him.
Flory jumped to his feet and pulled her back.

‘No fear! You stay here. Wait!’

He slipped two of the small-shot cartridges into his gun
and ran after the sound of the leopard. For a moment
Elizabeth could not see either beast or man, then they
reappeared in a bare patch thirty yards away. The leopard
was writhing along on his belly, sobbing as he went. Flory
levelled his gun and fired at four yards’ distance. The
leopard jumped like a cushion when one hits it, then rolled
over, curled up and lay still. Flory poked the body with
his gun-barrel. It did not stir.

‘It’s all right, he’s done for,’ he called. ‘Come and have
a look at him.’

The two Burmans jumped down from their tree, and
they and Elizabeth went across to where Flory was standing.
The leopard—it was a male—was lying curled up
with his head between his forepaws. He looked much
smaller than he had looked alive; he looked rather pathetic,
like a dead kitten. Elizabeth’s knees were still quivering.
She and Flory stood looking down at the leopard, close
together, but not clasping hands this time.

It was only a moment before Ko S’la and the others
came up, shouting with glee. Flo gave one sniff at the dead
leopard, then down went her tail and she bolted fifty yards,
whimpering. She could not be induced to come near him
again. Everyone squatted down round the leopard and
gazed at him. They stroked his beautiful white belly, soft
as a hare’s, and squeezed his broad pugs to bring out the
claws, and pulled back his black lips to examine the fangs.
Presently two of the beaters cut down a tall bamboo and
slung the leopard upon it by his paws, with his long tail
trailing down, and then they marched back to the village
in triumph. There was no talk of further shooting, though
the light still held. They were all, including the Europeans,
too anxious to get home and boast of what they had done.

Flory and Elizabeth walked side by side across the
stubble field. The others were thirty yards ahead with the
guns and the leopard, and Flo was slinking after them a
long way in the rear. The sun was going down beyond the
Irrawaddy. The light shone level across the field, gilding
the stubble stalks, and striking into their faces with a
yellow, gentle beam. Elizabeth’s shoulder was almost
touching Flory’s as they walked. The sweat that had
drenched their shirts had dried again. They did not talk
much. They were happy with that inordinate happiness
that comes of exhaustion and achievement, and with
which nothing else in life—no joy of either the body or
the mind—is even able to be compared.

‘The leopard-skin is yours,’ Flory said as they approached
the village.

‘Oh, but you shot him!’

‘Never mind, you stick to the skin. By Jove, I wonder
how many of the women in this country would have kept
their heads like you did! I can just see them screaming and
fainting. I’ll get the skin cured for you in Kyauktada jail.
There’s a convict there who can cure skins as soft as velvet.
He’s doing a seven-year sentence, so he’s had time to learn
the job.’

‘Oh well, thanks awfully.’

No more was said for the present. Later, when they had
washed off the sweat and dirt, and were fed and rested, they
would meet again at the Club. They made no rendezvous,
but it was understood between them that they would meet.
Also, it was understood that Flory would ask Elizabeth to
marry him, though nothing was said about this either.

At the village Flory paid the beaters eight annas each,
superintended the skinning of the leopard, and gave the
headman a bottle of beer and two of the imperial pigeons.
The skin and skull were packed into one of the canoes. All
the whiskers had been stolen, in spite of Ko S’la’s efforts
to guard them. Some young men of the village carried off
the carcase in order to eat the heart and various other
organs, the eating of which they believed would make
them strong and swift like the leopard.

XV

When Flory arrived at the Club he found the Lackersteens
in an unusually morose mood. Mrs Lackersteen was
sitting, as usual, in the best place under the punkah, and was
reading the Civil List, the Debrett of Burma. She was in
a bad temper with her husband, who had defied her by
ordering a ‘large peg’ as soon as he reached the Club, and
was further defying her by reading the Pink’un. Elizabeth
was alone in the stuffy little library, turning over the pages
of an old copy of Blackwood’s.

Since parting with Flory, Elizabeth had had a very
disagreeable adventure. She had come out of her bath and
was half-way through dressing for dinner when her uncle
had suddenly appeared in her room—pretext, to hear some
more about the day’s shooting—and begun pinching her
leg in a way that simply could not be misunderstood.
Elizabeth was horrified. This was her first introduction to
the fact that some men are capable of making love to their
nieces. We live and learn. Mr Lackersteen had tried to carry
the thing off as a joke, but he was too clumsy and too
nearly drunk to succeed. It was fortunate that his wife was
out of hearing, or there might have been a first-rate scandal.

After this, dinner was an uncomfortable meal. Mr
Lackersteen was sulking. What rot it was, the way these
women put on airs and prevented you from having a good
time! The girl was pretty enough to remind him of the
illustrations in La Vie Parisienne, and damn it! wasn’t he
paying for her keep? It was a shame. But for Elizabeth the
position was very serious. She was penniless and had no
home except her uncle’s house. She had come eight
thousand miles to stay here. It would be terrible if after
only a fortnight her uncle’s house were to be made uninhabitable
for her.

Consequently, one thing was much surer in her mind
than it had been: that if Flory asked her to marry him (and
he would, there was little doubt of it), she would say yes.
At another time it is just possible that she would have
decided differently. This afternoon, under the spell of that
glorious, exciting, altogether ‘lovely’ adventure, she had
come near to loving Flory; as near as, in his particular case,
she was able to come. Yet even after that, perhaps, her
doubts would have returned. For there had always been
something dubious about Flory; his age, his birthmark, his
queer, perverse way of talking—that ‘highbrow’ talk that
was at once unintelligible and disquieting. There had been
days when she had even disliked him. But now her uncle’s
behaviour had turned the scale. Whatever happened she
had got to escape from her uncle’s house, and that soon.
Yes, undoubtedly she would marry Flory when he asked her!

He could see her answer in her face as he came into the
library. Her air was gentler, more yielding than he had
known it. She was wearing the same lilac-coloured frock
that she had worn that first morning when he met her, and
the sight of the familiar frock gave him courage. It seemed
to bring her nearer to him, taking away the strangeness and
the elegance that had sometimes unnerved him.

He picked up the magazine she had been reading and
made some remark; for a moment they chattered in the
banal way they so seldom managed to avoid. It is strange
how the drivelling habits of conversation will persist into
almost all moments. Yet even as they chattered they found
themselves drifting to the door and then outside, and
presently to the big frangipani tree by the tennis court. It
was the night of the full moon. Flaring like a white-hot
coin, so brilliant that it hurt one’s eyes, the moon swam
rapidly upwards in a sky of smoky blue, across which
drifted a few wisps of yellowish cloud. The stars were all
invisible. The croton bushes, by day hideous things like
jaundiced laurels, were changed by the moon into jagged
black-and-white designs like fantastic woodcuts. By the
compound fence two Dravidian coolies were walking
down the road, transfigured, their white rags gleaming.
Through the tepid air the scent streamed from the frangipani
tree like some intolerable compound out of a penny-in-the-slot
machine.

‘Look at the moon, just look at it!’ Flory said. ‘It’s like
a white sun. It’s brighter than an English winter day.’

Elizabeth looked up into the branches of the frangipani
tree, which the moon seemed to have changed into rods
of silver. The light lay thick, as though palpable, on everything,
crusting the earth and the rough bark of trees like
some dazzling salt, and every leaf seemed to bear a freight
of solid light, like snow. Even Elizabeth, indifferent to such
things, was astonished.

‘It’s wonderful! You never see moonlight like that at
Home. It’s so—so——’ No adjective except ‘bright’
presenting itself, she was silent. She had a habit of leaving
her sentences unfinished, like Rosa Dartle, though for a
different reason.

‘Yes, the old moon does her best in this country.
How that tree does stink, doesn’t it? Beastly, tropical
thing! I hate a tree that blooms all the year round, don’t
you?’

He was talking half abstractedly, to cover the time till
the coolies should be out of sight. As they disappeared he
put his arm round Elizabeth’s shoulder, and then, when she
did not start or speak, turned her round and drew her
against him. Her head came against his breast, and her short
hair grazed his lips. He put his hand under her chin and
lifted her face up to meet his. She was not wearing her
spectacles.

‘You don’t mind?’

‘No.’

‘I mean, you don’t mind my—this thing of mine?’ he
shook his head slightly to indicate the birthmark. He could
not kiss her without first asking this question.

‘No, no. Of course not.’

A moment after their mouths met he felt her bare arms
settle lightly round his neck. They stood pressed together,
against the smooth trunk of the frangipani tree, body to
body, mouth to mouth, for a minute or more. The sickly
scent of the tree came mingling with the scent of Elizabeth’s
hair. And the scent gave him a feeling of stultification,
of remoteness from Elizabeth, even though she was
in his arms. All that that alien tree symbolised for him, his
exile, the secret, wasted years—it was like an unbridgeable
gulf between them. How should he ever make her understand
what it was that he wanted of her? He disengaged
himself and pressed her shoulders gently against the tree,
looking down at her face, which he could see very clearly
though the moon was behind her.

‘It’s useless trying to tell you what you mean to me,’ he
said. ‘ “What you mean to me”! These blunted phrases!
You don’t know, you can’t know, how much I love you.
But I’ve got to try and tell you. There’s so much I must
tell you. Had we better go back to the Club? They may
come looking for us. We can talk on the veranda.’

‘Is my hair very untidy?’ she said.

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘But has it got untidy? Smooth it for me, would you,
please?’

She bent her head towards him, and he smoothed the
short, cool locks with his hand. The way she bent her head
to him gave him a curious feeling of intimacy, far more
intimate than the kiss, as though he had already been her
husband. Ah, he must have her, that was certain! Only by
marrying her could his life be salvaged. In a moment he
would ask her. They walked slowly through the croton
bushes and back to the Club, his arm still round her
shoulder.

‘We can talk on the veranda,’ he repeated. ‘Somehow,
we’ve never really talked, you and I. My God, how I’ve
longed all these years for somebody to talk to! How I could
talk to you, interminably, interminably! That sounds
boring. I’m afraid it will be boring. I must ask you to put
up with it for a little while.’

She made a sound of remonstrance at the word ‘boring’.

‘No, it is boring, I know that. We Anglo-Indians are
always looked on as bores. And we are bores. But we can’t
help it. You see, there’s—how shall I say?—a demon inside
us driving us to talk. We walk about under a load of
memories which we long to share and somehow never can.
It’s the price we pay for coming to this country.’

They were fairly safe from interruption on the side
veranda, for there was no door opening directly upon it.
Elizabeth had sat down with her arms on the little wicker
table, but Flory remained strolling back and forth, with his
hands in his coat pockets, stepping into the moonlight that
streamed beneath the eastern eaves of the veranda, and back
into the shadows.

‘I said just now that I loved you. Love! The word’s been
used till it’s meaningless. But let me try to explain. This
afternoon when you were there shooting with me, I
thought, my God! here at last is somebody who can share
my life with me, but really share it, really live it with
me do you see?’

He was going to ask her to marry him—indeed, he had
intended to ask her without more delay. But the words
were not spoken yet; instead, he found himself talking
egoistically on and on. He could not help it. It was so
important that she should understand something of what
his life in this country had been; that she should grasp the
nature of the loneliness that he wanted her to nullify. And
it was so devilishly difficult to explain. It is devilish to suffer
from a pain that is all but nameless. Blessed are they who
are stricken only with classifiable diseases! Blessed are the
poor, the sick, the crossed in love, for at least other people
know what is the matter with them and will listen to their
belly-achings with sympathy. But who that has not suffered
it understands the pain of exile? Elizabeth watched
him as he moved to and fro, in and out of the pool of
moonlight that turned his silk coat to silver. Her heart was
still knocking from the kiss, and yet her thoughts wandered
as he talked. Was he going to ask her to marry him? He
was being so slow about it! She was dimly aware that he
was saying something about loneliness. Ah, of course! He
was telling her about the loneliness she would have to put
up with in the jungle, when they were married. He needn’t
have troubled. Perhaps you did get rather lonely in the
jungle sometimes? Miles from anywhere, no cinemas, no
dances, no one but each other to talk to, nothing to do in
the evenings except read—rather a bore, that. Still, you
could have a gramophone. What a difference it would
make when those new portable radio sets got out to
Burma! She was about to say this when he added:

‘Have I made myself at all clear to you? Have you got
some picture of the life we live here? The foreignness, the
solitude, the melancholy! Foreign trees, foreign flowers,
foreign landscapes, foreign faces. It’s all as alien as a different
planet. But do you see—and it’s this that I so want you to
understand—do you see, it mightn’t be so bad living on
a different planet, it might even be the most interesting
thing imaginable, if you had even one person to share it
with. One person who could see it with eyes something
like your own. This country’s been a kind of solitary hell
to me—it’s so to most of us—and yet I tell you it could
be a paradise if one weren’t alone. Does all this seem quite
meaningless?’

He had stopped beside the table, and he picked up her
hand. In the half-darkness he could see her face only as a
pale oval, like a flower, but by the feeling of her hand he
knew instantly that she had not understood a word of what
he was saying. How should she, indeed? It was so futile,
this meandering talk! He would say to her at once, Will
you marry me? Was there not a lifetime to talk in? He took
her other hand and drew her gently to her feet.

‘Forgive me all this rot I’ve been talking.’

‘It’s all right,’ she murmured indistinctly, expecting that
he was about to kiss her.

‘No, it’s rot talking like that. Some things will go into
words, some won’t. Besides, it was an impertinence to go
belly-aching on and on about myself. But I was trying to
lead up to something. Look, this is what I wanted to say.
Will——’

‘Eliz-a-beth!’

It was Mrs Lackersteen’s high-pitched, plaintive voice,
calling from within the Club.

‘Elizabeth! Where are you, Elizabeth?’

Evidently she was near the front door—would be on the
veranda in a moment. Flory pulled Elizabeth against him.
They kissed hurriedly. He released her, only holding her
hands.

‘Quickly, there’s just time. Answer me this. Will
you——’

But that sentence never got any further. At the same
moment something extraordinary happened under his feet—the
floor was surging and rolling like a sea—he was
staggering, then dizzily falling, hitting his upper arm a
thump as the floor rushed towards him. As he lay there he
found himself jerked violently backwards and forwards as
though some enormous beast below were rocking the
whole building on its back.

The drunken floor righted itself very suddenly, and
Flory sat up, dazed but not much hurt. He dimly noticed
Elizabeth sprawling beside him, and screams coming from
within the Club. Beyond the gate two Burmans were
racing through the moonlight with their long hair streaming
behind them. They were yelling at the top of their
voices:

‘Nga Yin is shaking himself! Nga Yin is shaking himself!’

Flory watched them unintelligently. Who was Nga
Yin? Nga is the prefix given to criminals. Nga Yin must
be a dacoit. Why was he shaking himself? Then he remembered.
Nga Yin was a giant supposed by the Burmese to
be buried, like Typhaeus, beneath the crust of the earth. Of
course! It was an earthquake.

‘An earthquake!’ he exclaimed, and he remembered
Elizabeth and moved to pick her up. But she was already
sitting up, unhurt, and rubbing the back of her head.

‘Was that an earthquake?’ she said in a rather awed voice.

Mrs Lackersteen’s tall form came creeping round the
corner of the veranda, clinging to the wall like some
elongated lizard. She was exclaiming hysterically:

Mr Lackersteen tottered after her, with a strange
ataxic step caused partly by earth-tremors and partly by
gin.

‘An earthquake, dammit!’ he said.

Flory and Elizabeth slowly picked themselves up. They
all went inside, with that queer feeling in the soles of the
feet that one has when one steps from a rocking boat onto
the shore. The old butler was hurrying from the servants’
quarters, thrusting his pagri on his head as he came, and a
troop of twittering chokras after him.

‘Earthquake, sir, earthquake!’ he bubbled eagerly.

‘I should damn well think it was an earthquake,’ said Mr
Lackersteen as he lowered himself cautiously into a chair.
‘Here, get some drinks, butler. By God, I could do with
a nip of something after that.’

They all had a nip of something. The butler, shy yet
beaming, stood on one leg beside the table, with the tray
in his hand. ‘Earthquake, sir, big earthquake!’ he repeated
enthusiastically. He was bursting with eagerness to talk; so,
for that matter, was everyone else. An extraordinary joie
de vivre had come over them all as soon as the shaky feeling
departed from their legs. An earthquake is such fun when
it is over. It is so exhilarating to reflect that you are not,
as you well might be, lying dead under a heap of ruins.
With one accord they all burst out talking: ‘My dear, I’ve
never had such a shock—I fell absolutely flat on my back—I
thought it was a dam’ pariah dog scratching itself under the
floor—I thought it must be an explosion somewhere—’
and so on and so forth; the usual earthquake-chatter. Even
the butler was included in the conversation.

‘I expect you can remember ever so many earthquakes,
can’t you, butler?’ said Mrs Lackersteen, quite graciously,
for her.

‘Oh, sir, but 1906 was bigger! Very bad shock, sir! And
big heathen idol in the temple fall down on top of the
thathanabaing, that is Buddhist bishop, madam, which the
Burmese say mean bad omen for failure of paddy crop and
foot-and-mouth disease. Also in 1887 my first earthquake
I remember, when I was a little chokra, and Major Maclagan
sahib was lying under the table and promising he sign
the teetotal pledge tomorrow morning. He not know it
was an earthquake. Also two cows was killed by falling
roofs,’ etc. etc.

The Europeans stayed in the Club till midnight, and the
butler popped into the room as many as half a dozen times
to relate a new anecdote. So far from snubbing him, the
Europeans even encouraged him to talk. There is nothing
like an earthquake for drawing people together. One more
tremor, or perhaps two, and they would have asked the
butler to sit down at table with them.

Meanwhile, Flory’s proposal went no further. One
cannot propose marriage immediately after an earthquake.
In any case, he did not see Elizabeth alone for the rest of
that evening. But it did not matter, he knew that she was
his now. In the morning there would be time enough. On
this thought, at peace in his mind and dog-tired after the
long day, he went to bed.

XVI

The vultures in the big pyinkado trees by the cemetery
flapped from their dung-whitened branches, steadied
themselves on the wing, and climbed by vast spirals into
the upper air. It was early, but Flory was out already. He
was going down to the Club, to wait until Elizabeth came
and then ask her formally to marry him. Some instinct,
which he did not understand, prompted him to do it before
the other Europeans returned from the jungle.

As he came out of the compound gate he saw that there
was a new arrival at Kyauktada. A youth with a long spear
like a needle in his hand was cantering across the maidan on
a white pony. Some Sikhs, looking like sepoys, ran after
him, leading two other ponies, a bay and a chestnut, by the
bridle. When he came level with him Flory halted on the
road and shouted good morning. He had not recognised
the youth, but it is usual in small stations to make strangers
welcome. The other saw that he was hailed, wheeled his
pony negligently round and brought it to the side of the road.
He was a youth of about twenty-five, lank but very straight,
and manifestly a cavalry officer. He had one of those
rabbit-like faces common among English soldiers, with pale
blue eyes and a little triangle of fore-teeth visible between
the lips; yet hard, fearless and even brutal in a careless
fashion—a rabbit, perhaps, but a tough and martial rabbit.
He sat his horse as though he were part of it, and he looked
offensively young and fit. His fresh face was tanned to the
exact shade that went with his light-coloured eyes, and he
was as elegant as a picture with his white buckskin topi and
his polo-boots that gleamed like an old meerschaum pipe.
Flory felt uncomfortable in his presence from the start.

‘How d’you do?’ said Flory. ‘Have you just arrived?’

‘Last night, got in by the late train.’ He had a surly,
boyish voice. ‘I’ve been sent up here with a company of
men to stand by in case your local badmashes start any
trouble. My name’s Verrall—Military Police,’ he added,
not, however, inquiring Flory’s name in return.

‘Oh yes. We heard they were sending somebody.
Where are you putting up?’

‘Dak bungalow, for the time being. There was some
black beggar staying there when I got in last night—Excise
Officer or something. I booted him out. This is a filthy
hole, isn’t it?’ he said with a backward movement of his
head, indicating the whole of Kyauktada.

‘I suppose it’s like the rest of these small stations. Are you
staying long?’

‘Only a month or so, thank God. Till the rains break.
What a rotten maidan you’ve got here, haven’t you? Pity
they can’t keep this stuff cut,’ he added, swishing the dried-up
grass with the point of his spear. ‘Makes it so hopeless
for polo or anything.’

‘I’m afraid you won’t get any polo here,’ Flory said.
‘Tennis is the best we can manage. There are only eight of
us all told, and most of us spend three-quarters of our time
in the jungle.’

‘Christ! What a hole!’

After this there was a silence. The tall, bearded Sikhs
stood in a group round their horses’ heads, eyeing Flory
without much favour. It was perfectly clear that Verrall
was bored with the conversation and wanted to escape.
Flory had never in his life felt so completely de trop, or so
old and shabby. He noticed that Verrall’s pony was a
beautiful Arab, a mare, with proud neck and arching,
plume-like tail; a lovely milk-white thing, worth several
thousands of rupees. Verrall had already twitched his bridle
to turn away, evidently feeling that he had talked enough
for one morning.

‘That’s a wonderful pony of yours,’ Flory said.

‘She’s not bad, better than these Burma scrubs. I’ve
come out to do a bit of tent-pegging. It’s hopeless trying
to knock a polo-ball about in this muck. Hey, Hira Singh!’
he called, and turned his pony away.

The sepoy holding the bay pony handed his bridle to a
companion, ran to a spot forty yards away, and fixed a
narrow boxwood peg in the ground. Verrall took no
further notice of Flory. He raised his spear and poised
himself as though taking aim at the peg, while the Indians
backed their horses out of the way and stood watching
critically. With a just perceptible movement Verrall dug
his knees into the pony’s sides. She bounded forward like
a bullet from a catapult. As easily as a centaur the lank,
straight youth leaned over in the saddle, lowered his spear
and plunged it clean through the peg. One of the Indians
muttered gruffly ‘Shabash!’ Verrall raised his spear behind
him in the orthodox fashion, and then, pulling his horse
to a canter, wheeled round and handed the transfixed peg
to the sepoy.

Verrall rode twice more at the peg, and hit it each time.
It was done with matchless grace and with extraordinary
solemnity. The whole group of men, Englishman and
Indians, were concentrated upon the business of hitting the
peg as though it had been a religious ritual. Flory still stood
watching, disregarded—Verrall’s face was one of those that
are specially constructed for ignoring unwelcome strangers—but
from the very fact that he had been snubbed unable
to tear himself away. Somehow, Verrall had filled him
with a horrible sense of inferiority. He was trying to think
of some pretext of renewing the conversation, when he
looked up the hillside and saw Elizabeth, in pale blue,
coming out of her uncle’s gate. She must have seen the
third transfixing of the peg. His heart stirred painfully. A
thought occurred to him, one of those rash thoughts that
usually lead to trouble. He called to Verrall, who was a few
yards away from him, and pointed with his stick.

‘Do these other two know how to do it?’

Verrall looked over his shoulder with a surly air. He had
expected Flory to go away after being ignored.

‘What?’

‘Can these other two do it?’ Flory repeated.

‘The chestnut’s not bad. Bolts if you let him, though.’

‘Let me have a shot at the peg, would you?’

‘All right,’ said Verrall ungraciously. ‘Don’t go and cut
his mouth to bits.’

A sepoy brought the pony, and Flory pretended to
examine the curb-chain. In reality he was temporising until
Elizabeth should be thirty or forty yards away. He made
up his mind that he would stick the peg exactly at the
moment when she passed (it is easy enough on the small
Burma ponies, provided that they will gallop straight), and
then ride up to her with it on his point. That was obviously
the right move. He did not want her to think that that
pink-faced young whelp was the only person who could
ride. He was wearing shorts, which are uncomfortable to
ride in, but he knew that, like nearly everyone, he looked
his best on horseback.

Elizabeth was approaching. Flory stepped into the
saddle, took the spear from the Indian and waved it in
greeting to Elizabeth. She made no response, however.
Probably she was shy in front of Verrall. She was looking
away, towards the cemetery, and her cheeks were
pink.

‘Chalo,’ said Flory to the Indian, and then dug his knees
into the horse’s sides.

The very next instant, before the horse had taken two
bounds, Flory found himself hurtling through the air,
hitting the ground with a crack that wrenched his shoulder
almost out of joint, and rolling over and over. Mercifully
the spear fell clear of him. He lay supine, with a blurred
vision of blue sky and floating vultures. Then his eyes
focused on the khaki pagri and dark face of a Sikh, bearded
to the eyes, bending over him.

‘What’s happened?’ he said in English, and he raised
himself painfully on his elbow. The Sikh made some gruff
answer and pointed. Flory saw the chestnut pony careering
away over the maidan, with the saddle under its belly. The
girth had not been tightened and had slipped round; hence
his fall.

When Flory sat up he found that he was in extreme pain.
The right shoulder of his shirt was torn open and already
soaking with blood, and he could feel more blood oozing
from his cheek. The hard earth had grazed him. His hat,
too, was gone. With a deadly pang he remembered Elizabeth,
and he saw her coming towards him, barely ten yards
away, looking straight at him as he sprawled there so
ignominiously. My God, my God! he thought, O my
God, what a fool I must look! The thought of it even drove
away the pain of the fall. He clapped a hand over his
birthmark, though the other cheek was the damaged
one.

‘Elizabeth! Hullo, Elizabeth! Good morning!’

He had called out eagerly, appealingly, as one does when
one is conscious of looking a fool. She did not answer, and
what was almost incredible, she walked on without
pausing even for an instant, as though she had neither seen
nor heard him.

‘Elizabeth!’ he called again, taken aback; ‘did you
see me fall? The saddle slipped. The fool of a sepoy
hadn’t——’

There was no question that she had heard him now. She
turned her face full upon him for a moment, and looked
at him and through him as though he had not existed. Then
she gazed away into the distance beyond the cemetery. It
was terrible. He called after her in dismay—

‘Elizabeth! I say, Elizabeth!’

She passed on without a word, without a sign, without
a look. She was walking sharply down the road, with a
click of heels, her back turned upon him.

The sepoys had come round him now, and Verrall, too,
had ridden across to where Flory lay. Some of the sepoys
had saluted Elizabeth; Verrall had ignored her, perhaps not
seeing her. Flory rose stiffly to his feet. He was badly
bruised, but no bones were broken. The Indians brought
him his hat and stick, but they did not apologise for their
carelessness. They looked faintly contemptuous, as though
thinking that he had only got what he deserved. It was
conceivable that they had loosened the girth on purpose.

‘The saddle slipped,’ said Flory in the weak, stupid way
that one does at such moments.

‘Why the devil couldn’t you look at it before you got
up?’ said Verrall briefly. ‘You ought to know these beggars
aren’t to be trusted.’

Having said which he twitched his bridle and rode
away, feeling the incident closed. The sepoys followed him
without saluting Flory. When Flory reached his gate he
looked back and saw that the chestnut pony had already
been caught and re-saddled, and Verrall was tent-pegging
upon it.

The fall had so shaken him that even now he could
hardly collect his thoughts. What could have made her
behave like that? She had seen him lying bloody and in
pain, and she had walked past him as though he had been
a dead dog. How could it have happened? Had it happened?
It was incredible. Could she be angry with him?
Could he have offended her in any way? All the servants
were waiting at the compound fence. They had come out
to watch the tent-pegging, and every one of them had seen
his bitter humiliation. Ko S’la ran part of the way down
the hill to meet him, with concerned face.

‘The god has hurt himself? Shall I carry the god back
to the house?’

‘No,’ said the god. ‘Go and get me some whisky and a
clean shirt.’

When they got back to the house Ko S’la made Flory
sit down on the bed and peeled off his torn shirt, which the
blood had stuck to his body. Ko S’la clicked his tongue.

‘Ah ma lay! These cuts are full of dirt. You ought not
to play these children’s games on strange ponies, thakin.
Not at your age. It is too dangerous.’

‘The saddle slipped,’ Flory said.

‘Such games,’ pursued Ko S’la, ‘are all very well for the
young police officer. But you are no longer young, thakin.
A fall hurts at your age. You should take more care of
yourself.’

‘Do you take me for an old man?’ said Flory angrily.
His shoulder was smarting abominably.

‘You are thirty-five, thakin,’ said Ko S’la politely but
firmly.

It was all very humiliating. Ma Pu and Ma Yi, temporarily
at peace, had brought a pot of some dreadful mess
which they declared was good for cuts. Flory told Ko S’la
privately to throw it out of the window and substitute
boracic ointment. Then, while he sat in a tepid bath and
Ko S’la sponged the dirt out of his grazes, he puzzled
helplessly, and, as his head grew clearer, with a deeper and
deeper dismay, over what had happened. He had offended
her bitterly, that was clear. But, when he had not even seen
her since last night, how could he have offended her? And
there was no even plausible answer.

He explained to Ko S’la several times over that his fall
was due to the saddle slipping. But Ko S’la, though sympathetic,
clearly did not believe him. To the end of his days,
Flory perceived, the fall would be attributed to his own bad
horsemanship. On the other hand, a fortnight ago, he had
won undeserved renown by putting to flight the harmless
buffalo. Fate is even-handed, after a fashion.

XVII

Flory did not see Elizabeth again until he went down to
the Club after dinner. He had not, as he might have done,
sought her out and demanded an explanation. His face
unnerved him when he looked at it in the glass. With the
birthmark on one side and the graze on the other it was
so woe-begone, so hideous, that he dared not show himself
by daylight. As he entered the Club lounge he put his hand
over his birthmark—pretext, a mosquito bite on the forehead.
It would have been more than his nerve was equal
to, not to cover his birthmark at such a moment. However,
Elizabeth was not there.

Instead, he tumbled into an unexpected quarrel. Ellis and
Westfield had just got back from the jungle, and they were
sitting drinking, in a sour mood. News had come from
Rangoon that the editor of the Burmese Patriot had been
given only four months’ imprisonment for his libel against
Mr Macgregor, and Ellis was working himself up into a
rage over this light sentence. As soon as Flory came in Ellis
began baiting him with remarks about ‘that little nigger
Very-slimy’. At the moment the very thought of quarrelling
made Flory yawn, but he answered incautiously, and
there was an argument. It grew heated, and after Ellis had
called Flory a nigger’s Nancy Boy and Flory had replied
in kind, Westfield too lost his temper. He was a good-natured
man, but Flory’s Bolshie ideas sometimes annoyed
him. He could never understand why, when there was so
clearly a right and a wrong opinion about everything,
Flory always seemed to delight in choosing the wrong one.
He told Flory ‘not to start talking like a damned Hyde Park
agitator’, and then read him a snappish little sermon, taking
as his text the five chief beatitudes of the pukka sahib,
namely:

Keeping up our prestige,

The firm hand (without the velvet glove),

We white men must hang together,

Give them an inch and they’ll take an ell, and

Esprit de corps.

All the while his anxiety to see Elizabeth was so gnawing
at Flory’s heart that he could hardly hear what was said to
him. Besides, he had heard it all so often, so very often—a
hundred times, a thousand times it might be, since his first
week in Rangoon, when his burra sahib (an old Scotch
gin-soaker and great breeder of racing ponies, afterwards
warned off the turf for some dirty business of running the
same horse under two different names) saw him take off
his topi to pass a native funeral and said to him reprovingly:
‘Remember laddie, always remember, we are sahiblog and
they are dirrt!’ It sickened him, now, to have to listen to
such trash. So he cut Westfield short by saying blasphemously:

‘Oh, shut up! I’m sick of the subject. Veraswami’s a
damned good fellow—a damned sight better than some
white men I can think of. Anyway, I’m going to propose
his name for the Club when the general meeting comes.
Perhaps he’ll liven this bloody place up a bit.’

Whereat the row would have become serious if it had
not ended as most rows ended at the Club—with the
appearance of the butler, who had heard the raised voices.

‘Did master call, sir?’

‘No. Go to hell,’ said Ellis morosely.

The butler retired, but that was the end of the dispute
for the time being. At this moment there were footsteps
and voices outside; the Lackersteens were arriving at the
Club.

When they entered the lounge, Flory could not even
nerve himself to look directly at Elizabeth; but he noticed
that all three of them were much more smartly dressed
than usual. Mr Lackersteen was even wearing a dinner-jacket—white,
because of the season—and was completely
sober. The boiled shirt and piqué waistcoat seemed to hold
him upright and stiffen his moral fibre like a breastplate.
Mrs Lackersteen looked handsome and serpentine in a red
dress. In some indefinable way all three gave the impression
that they were waiting to receive some distinguished guest.

When drinks had been called for, and Mrs Lackersteen
had usurped the place under the punkah, Flory took a chair
on the outside of the group. He dared not accost Elizabeth
yet. Mrs Lackersteen had begun talking in an extraordinary,
silly manner about the dear Prince of Wales, and
putting on an accent like a temporarily promoted chorus-girl
playing the part of a duchess in a musical comedy. The
others wondered privately what the devil was the matter
with her. Flory had stationed himself almost behind Elizabeth.
She was wearing a yellow frock, cut very short as the
fashion then was, with champagne-coloured stockings and
slippers to match, and she carried a big ostrich-feather fan.
She looked so modish, so adult, that he feared her more
than he had ever done. It was unbelievable that he had ever
kissed her. She was talking easily to all the others at once,
and now and again he dared to put a word into the general
conversation; but she never answered him directly, and
whether or not she meant to ignore him, he could not tell.

‘Well,’ said Mrs Lackersteen presently, ‘and who’s for a
rubbah?’

She said quite distinctly a ‘rubbah’. Her accent was
growing more aristocratic with every word she uttered. It
was unaccountable. It appeared that Ellis, Westfield and
Mr Lackersteen were for a ‘rubbah’. Flory refused as soon
as he saw that Elizabeth was not playing. Now or never
was his chance to get her alone. When they all moved for
the card-room, he saw with a mixture of fear and relief that
Elizabeth came last. He stopped in the doorway, barring
her path. He had turned deadly pale. She shrank from him
a little.

‘Excuse me,’ they both said simultaneously.

‘One moment,’ he said, and do what he would his voice
trembled. ‘May I speak to you? You don’t mind—there’s
something I must say.’

‘It’s only this. Whatever I’ve done to offend you—please
tell me what it is. Tell me and let me put it right. I’d sooner
cut my hand off than offend you. Just tell me, don’t let me
go on not even knowing what it is.’

‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about. “Tell
you how you’ve offended me?” Why should you have
offended me?’

‘But I must have! After the way you behaved!’

‘ “After the way I behaved?” I don’t know what you
mean. I don’t know why you’re talking in this extraordinary
way at all.’

‘But you won’t even speak to me! This morning you
cut me absolutely dead.’

‘Surely I can do as I like without being questioned?’

‘But please, please! Don’t you see, you must see, what
it’s like for me to be snubbed all of a sudden. After all, only
last night you——’

She turned pink. ‘I think it’s absolutely—absolutely
caddish of you to mention such things!’

‘I know, I know. I know all that. But what else can I
do? You walked past me this morning as though I’d been
a stone. I know that I’ve offended you in some way. Can
you blame me if I want to know what it is that I’ve done?’

He was, as usual, making it worse with every word he
said. He perceived that whatever he had done, to be made
to speak of it seemed to her worse than the thing itself. She
was not going to explain. She was going to leave him in
the dark—snub him and then pretend that nothing had
happened; the natural feminine move. Nevertheless he
urged her again:

‘Please tell me. I can’t let everything end between us like
this.’

‘ “End between us?” There was nothing to end,’ she
said coldly.

The vulgarity of this remark wounded him, and he said
quickly:

‘That wasn’t like you, Elizabeth! It’s not generous to cut
a man dead after you’ve been kind to him, and then refuse
even to tell him the reason. You might be straightforward
with me. Please tell me what it is that I’ve done.’

She gave him an oblique, bitter look, bitter not because
of what he had done, but because he had made her speak
of it. But perhaps she was anxious to end the scene, and
she said:

‘Well then, if you absolutely force me to speak of it——’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m told that at the very same time as you were pretending
to—well, when you were . . . with me—oh, it’s too
beastly! I can’t speak of it.’

‘Go on.’

‘I’m told that you’re keeping a Burmese woman. And
now, will you please let me pass?’

With that she sailed—there was no other possible word
for it—she sailed past him with a swish of her short skirts,
and vanished into the card-room. And he remained looking
after her, too appalled to speak, and looking unutterably
ridiculous.

It was dreadful. He could not face her after that. He
turned to hurry out of the Club, and then dared not even
pass the door of the card-room, lest she should see him. He
went into the lounge, wondering how to escape, and
finally climbed over the veranda rail and dropped onto the
small square of lawn that ran down to the Irrawaddy. The
sweat was running from his forehead. He could have
shouted with anger and distress. The accursed luck of it!
To be caught out over a thing like that. ‘Keeping a
Burmese woman’—and it was not even true! But much
use it would ever be to deny it. Ah, what damned, evil
chance could have brought it to her ears?

But as a matter of fact, it was no chance. It had a
perfectly sound cause, which was also the cause of Mrs
Lackersteen’s curious behaviour at the Club this evening.
On the previous night, just before the earthquake, Mrs
Lackersteen had been reading the Civil List. The Civil List
(which tells you the exact income of every official in
Burma) was a source of inexhaustible interest to her. She
was in the middle of adding up the pay and allowances of
a Conservator of Forests whom she had once met in
Mandalay, when it occurred to her to look up the name
of Lieutenant Verrall, who, she had heard from Mr Macgregor,
was arriving at Kyauktada tomorrow with a
hundred Military Policemen. When she found the name,
she saw in front of it two words that startled her almost
out of her wits.

The words were ‘The Honourable’!

The Honourable! Lieutenants the Honourable are rare
anywhere, rare as diamonds in the Indian Army, rare as
dodos in Burma. And when you are the aunt of the only
marriageable young woman within fifty miles, and you
hear that a Lieutenant the Honourable is arriving no later
than tomorrow—well! With dismay Mrs Lackersteen
remembered that Elizabeth was out in the garden with
Flory—that drunken wretch Flory, whose pay was barely
seven hundred rupees a month, and who, it was only too
probable, was already proposing to her! She hastened
immediately to call Elizabeth inside, but at this moment the
earthquake intervened. However, on the way home there
was an opportunity to speak. Mrs Lackersteen laid her hand
affectionately on Elizabeth’s arm and said in the tenderest
voice she had ever succeeded in producing:

‘Of course you know, Elizabeth dear, that Flory is
keeping a Burmese woman?’

For a moment this deadly charge actually failed to
explode. Elizabeth was so new to the ways of the country
that the remark made no impression on her. It sounded
hardly more significant than ‘keeping a parrot’.

‘Keeping a Burmese woman? What for?’

‘What for? My dear! what does a man keep a woman for?’

And, of course, that was that.

For a long time Flory remained standing by the river
bank. The moon was up, mirrored in the water like a broad
shield of electron. The coolness of the outer air had
changed Flory’s mood. He had not even the heart to be
angry any longer. For he had perceived, with the deadly
self-knowledge and self-loathing that come to one at such
a time, that what had happened served him perfectly right.
For a moment it seemed to him that an endless procession
of Burmese women, a regiment of ghosts, were marching
past him in the moonlight. Heavens, what numbers of
them! A thousand—no, but a full hundred at the least.
‘Eyes right!’ he thought despondently. Their heads turned
towards him, but they had no faces, only featureless discs.
He remembered a blue longyi here, a pair of ruby earrings
there, but hardly a face or a name. The gods are just and
of our pleasant vices (pleasant, indeed!) make instruments
to plague us. He had dirtied himself beyond redemption,
and this was his just punishment.

He made his way slowly through the croton bushes and
round the clubhouse. He was too saddened to feel the full
pain of the disaster yet. It would begin hurting, as all deep
wounds do, long afterwards. As he passed through the gate
something stirred the leaves behind him. He started. There
was a whisper of harsh Burmese syllables.

‘Pike-san pay-like! Pike-san pay-like!’

He turned sharply. The ‘pike-san pay-like’ (‘Give me the
money’) was repeated. He saw a woman standing under
the shadow of the gold mohur tree. It was Ma Hla May.
She stepped out into the moonlight, warily, with a hostile
air, keeping her distance as though afraid that he would
strike her. Her face was coated with powder, sickly white
in the moon, and it looked as ugly as a skull, and defiant.

She had given him a shock. ‘What the devil are you
doing here?’ he said angrily in English.

‘Pike-san pay-like!’

‘What money? What do you mean? Why are you
following me about like this?’

‘Pike-san pay-like!’ she repeated almost in a scream. ‘The
money you promised me, thakin! You said you would give
me more money. I want it now, this instant!’

‘How can I give it you now? You shall have it next
month. I have given you a hundred and fifty rupees
already.’

To his alarm she began shrieking ‘Pike-san pay-like!’ and
a number of similar phrases almost at the top of her voice.
She seemed on the verge of hysterics. The volume of noise
that she produced was startling.

‘Be quiet! They’ll hear you in the Club!’ he exclaimed,
and was instantly sorry for putting the idea into her head.

‘Aha! Now I know what will frighten you! Give me the
money this instant, or I scream for help and bring them all
out here. Quick, now, or I begin screaming!’

‘You bitch!’ he said, and took a step towards her. She
sprang nimbly out of reach, whipped off her slipper, and
stood defying him.

‘Be quick! Fifty rupees now and the rest tomorrow. Out
with it! Or I give a scream they can hear as far as the bazaar!’

Flory swore. This was not the time for such a scene.
Finally he took out his pocket-book, found twenty-five
rupees in it, and threw them on to the ground. Ma Hla May
pounced on the notes and counted them.

‘I said fifty rupees, thakin!’

‘How can I give it you if I haven’t got it? Do you think
I carry hundreds of rupees about with me?’

‘I said fifty rupees!’

‘Oh, get out of my way!’ he said in English, and pushed
past her.

But the wretched woman would not leave him alone.
She began to follow him up the road like a disobedient
dog, screaming out ‘Pike-san pay-like! Pike-san pay-like!’ as
though mere noise could bring the money into existence.
He hurried, partly to draw her away from the Club, partly
in hopes of shaking her off, but she seemed ready to follow
him as far as the house if necessary. After a while he could
not stand it any longer, and he turned to drive her back.

‘Go away this instant! If you follow me any further you
shall never have another anna.’

‘Pike-san pay-like!’

‘You fool,’ he said, ‘what good is this doing? How can
I give you the money when I have not another pice on
me?’

‘That is a likely story!’

He felt helplessly in his pockets. He was so wearied that
he would have given her anything to be rid of her. His
fingers encountered his cigarette-case, which was of gold.
He took it out.

‘Here, if I give you this will you go away? You can
pawn it for thirty rupees.’

Ma Hla May seemed to consider, then said sulkily, ‘Give
it me.’

He threw the cigarette-case onto the grass beside the
road. She grabbed it and immediately sprang back clutching
it to her ingyi, as though afraid that he would take it
away again. He turned and made for the house, thanking
God to be out of the sound of her voice. The cigarette-case
was the same one that she had stolen ten days ago.

At the gate he looked back. Ma Hla May was still
standing at the bottom of the hill, a greyish figurine in the
moonlight. She must have watched him up the hill like a
dog watching a suspicious stranger out of sight. It was
queer. The thought crossed his mind, as it had a few days
earlier when she sent him the blackmailing letter, that her
behaviour had been curious and unlike herself. She was
showing a tenacity of which he would never have thought
her capable—almost, indeed, as though someone else were
egging her on.

XVIII

After the row overnight Ellis was looking forward to
a week of baiting Flory. He had nicknamed him Nancy—short
for nigger’s Nancy Boy, but the women did
not know that—and was already inventing wild scandals
about him. Ellis always invented scandals about anyone
with whom he had quarrelled—scandals which grew,
by repeated embroideries, into a species of saga. Flory’s
incautious remark that Dr Veraswami was a ‘damned
good fellow’ had swelled before long into a whole Daily
Worker-ful of blasphemy and sedition.

‘On my honour, Mrs Lackersteen,’ said Ellis—Mrs
Lackersteen had taken a sudden dislike to Flory after discovering
the great secret about Verrall, and she was quite
ready to listen to Ellis’s tales—‘on my honour, if you’d
been there last night and heard the things that man Flory
was saying—well, it’d have made you shiver in your
shoes!’

‘Really! You know, I always thought he had such curious
ideas. What has he been talking about now? Not Socialism,
I hope?’

‘Worse.’

There were long recitals. However, to Ellis’s disappointment,
Flory had not stayed in Kyauktada to be baited. He
had gone back to camp the day after his dismissal by
Elizabeth. Elizabeth heard most of the scandalous tales
about him. She understood his character perfectly now.
She understood why it was that he had so often bored her
and irritated her. He was a highbrow—her deadliest word—a
highbrow, to be classed with Lenin, A. J. Cook and
the dirty little poets in the Montparnasse cafés. She could
have forgiven him even his Burmese mistress more easily
than that. Flory wrote to her three days later; a weak, stilted
letter, which he sent by hand—his camp was a day’s march
from Kyauktada. Elizabeth did not answer.

It was lucky for Flory that at present he was too busy
to have time to think. The whole camp was at sixes and
sevens since his long absence. Nearly thirty coolies were
missing, the sick elephant was worse than ever, and a vast
pile of teak logs which should have been sent off ten days
earlier were still waiting because the engine would not
work. Flory, a fool about machinery, struggled with the
bowels of the engine until he was black with grease and
Ko S’la told him sharply that white men ought not to do
‘coolie-work’. The engine was finally persuaded to run, or
at least to totter. The sick elephant was discovered to be
suffering from tapeworms. As for the coolies, they had
deserted because their supply of opium had been cut off—they
would not stay in the jungle without opium, which
they took as a prophylactic against fever. U Po Kyin,
willing to do Flory a bad turn, had caused the Excise
Officers to make a raid and seize the opium. Flory wrote
to Dr Veraswami, asking for his help. The doctor sent back
a quantity of opium, illegally procured, medicine for the
elephant and a careful letter of instructions. A tapeworm
measuring twenty-one feet was extracted. Flory was busy
twelve hours a day. In the evening if there was no more
to do he would plunge into the jungle and walk and walk
until the sweat stung his eyes and his knees were bleeding
from the briers. The nights were his bad time. The bitterness
of what had happened was sinking into him, as it
usually does, by slow degrees.

Meanwhile, several days had passed and Elizabeth had
not yet seen Verrall at less than a hundred yards’ distance.
It had been a great disappointment when he had not
appeared at the Club on the evening of his arrival. Mr
Lackersteen was really quite angry when he discovered that
he had been hounded into his dinner-jacket for nothing.
Next morning Mrs Lackersteen made her husband send an
officious note to the dak bungalow, inviting Verrall to the
Club; there was no answer, however. More days passed,
and Verrall made no move to join in the local society. He
had even neglected his official calls, not even bothering to
present himself at Mr Macgregor’s office. The dak bungalow
was at the other end of the town, near the station,
and he had made himself quite comfortable there. There
is a rule that one must vacate a dak bungalow after a stated
number of days, but Verrall peaceably ignored it. The
Europeans only saw him at morning and evening on the
maidan. On the second day after his arrival fifty of his men
turned out with sickles and cleared a large patch of the
maidan, after which Verrall was to be seen galloping to and
fro, practising polo strokes. He took not the smallest notice
of any Europeans who passed down the road. Westfield
and Ellis were furious, and even Mr Macgregor said that
Verrall’s behaviour was ‘ungracious’. They would all have
fallen at the feet of a Lieutenant the Honourable if he had
shown the smallest courtesy; as it was, everyone except the
two women detested him from the start. It is always so
with titled people, they are either adored or hated. If they
accept one it is charming simplicity, if they ignore one it
is loathsome snobbishness; there are no half-measures.

Verrall was the youngest son of a peer, and not at all rich,
but by the method of seldom paying a bill until a writ was
issued against him, he managed to keep himself in the only
things he seriously cared about: clothes and horses. He had
come out to India in a British cavalry regiment, and
exchanged into the Indian Army because it was cheaper
and left him greater freedom for polo. After two years his
debts were so enormous that he entered the Burma
Military police, in which it was notoriously possible to save
money; however, he detested Burma—it is no country for
a horseman—and he had already applied to go back to his
regiment. He was the kind of soldier who can get exchanges
when he wants them. Meanwhile, he was only to
be in Kyauktada for a month, and he had no intention of
mixing himself up with all the petty sahiblog of the district.
He knew the society of those small Burma stations—a
nasty, poodle-faking, horseless riff-raff. He despised them.

They were not the only people whom Verrall despised,
however. His various contempts would take a long time
to catalogue in detail. He despised the entire non-military
population of India, a few famous polo players excepted.
He despised the entire Army as well, except the cavalry.
He despised all Indian regiments, infantry and cavalry
alike. It was true that he himself belonged to a native
regiment, but that was only for his own convenience. He
took no interest in Indians, and his Urdu consisted mainly
of swearwords, with all the verbs in the third person
singular. His Military Policemen he looked on as no better
than coolies. ‘Christ, what God-forsaken swine!’ he was
often heard to mutter as he moved down the ranks inspecting,
with the old subahdar carrying his sword behind
him. Verrall had even been in trouble once for his outspoken
opinions on native troops. It was at a review, and
Verrall was among the group of officers standing behind
the general. An Indian infantry regiment approached for
the march-past.

‘The —— Rifles,’ somebody said.

‘And look at it,’ said Verrall in his surly boy’s voice.

The white-haired colonel of the —— Rifles was standing
near. He flushed to the neck, and reported Verrall to
the general. Verrall was reprimanded, but the general, a
British Army officer himself, did not rub it in very hard.
Somehow, nothing very serious ever did happen to
Verrall, however offensive he made himself. Up and down
India, wherever he was stationed, he left behind him a trail
of insulted people, neglected duties and unpaid bills. Yet
the disgraces that ought to have fallen on him never did.
He bore a charmed life, and it was not only the handle to
his name that saved him. There was something in his eye
before which duns, burra memsahibs and even colonels
quailed.

It was a disconcerting eye, pale blue and a little protuberant,
but exceedingly clear. It looked you over,
weighed you in the balance and found you wanting, in a
single cold scrutiny of perhaps five seconds. If you were
the right kind of man—that is, if you were a cavalry officer
and a polo player—Verrall took you for granted and even
treated you with a surly respect; if you were any other type
of man whatever, he despised you so utterly that he could
not have hidden it even if he would. It did not even make
any difference whether you were rich or poor, for in the
social sense he was not more than normally a snob. Of
course, like all sons of rich families, he thought poverty
disgusting and that poor people are poor because they
prefer disgusting habits. But he despised soft living. Spending,
or rather owing, fabulous sums on clothes, he yet lived
almost as ascetically as a monk. He exercised himself ceaselessly
and brutally, rationed his drink and his cigarettes,
slept on a camp bed (in silk pyjamas) and bathed in cold
water in the bitterest winter. Horsemanship and physical
fitness were the only gods he knew. The stamp of hooves
on the maidan, the strong, poised feeling of his body,
wedded centaur-like to the saddle, the polo-stick springy in
his hand—these were his religion, the breath of his life. The
Europeans in Burma—boozing, womanising, yellow-faced
loafers—made him physically sick when he thought
of their habits. As for social duties of all descriptions, he
called them poodle-faking and ignored them. Women he
abhorred. In his view they were a kind of siren whose one
aim was to lure men away from polo and enmesh them
in tea-fights and tennis-parties. He was not, however, quite
proof against women. He was young, and women of
nearly all kinds threw themselves at his head; now and
again he succumbed. But his lapses soon disgusted him, and
he was too callous when the pinch came to have any
difficulty about escaping. He had had perhaps a dozen such
escapes during his two years in India.

A whole week went by. Elizabeth had not even succeeded
in making Verrall’s acquaintance. It was so tantalising!
Every day, morning and evening, she and her aunt
walked down to the Club and back again, past the maidan;
and there was Verrall, hitting the polo-balls the sepoys
threw for him, ignoring the two women utterly. So near
and yet so far! What made it even worse was that neither
woman would have considered it decent to speak of the
matter directly. One evening the polo-ball, struck too
hard, came swishing through the grass and rolled across the
road in front of them. Elizabeth and her aunt stopped
involuntarily. But it was only a sepoy who ran to fetch the
ball. Verrall had seen the women and kept his distance.

Next morning Mrs Lackersteen paused as they came out
of the gate. She had given up riding in her rickshaw lately.
At the bottom of the maidan the Military Policemen were
drawn up, a dust-coloured rank with bayonets glittering.
Verrall was facing them, but not in uniform—he seldom
put on his uniform for morning parade, not thinking it
necessary with mere Military Policemen. The two women
were looking at everything except Verrall, and at the same
time, in some manner, were contriving to look at him.

‘The wretched thing is,’ said Mrs Lackersteen—this was
à propos de bottes, but the subject needed no introduction—‘the
wretched thing is that I’m afraid your uncle simply
must go back to camp before long.’

‘Must he really?’

‘I’m afraid so. It is so hateful in camp at this time of year!
Oh, those mosquitoes!’

‘Couldn’t he stay a bit longer? A week, perhaps?’

‘I don’t see how he can. He’s been nearly a month in
headquarters now. The firm would be furious if they heard
of it. And of course both of us will have to go with him.
Such a bore! The mosquitoes—simply terrible!’

Terrible indeed! To have to go away before Elizabeth
had so much as said how-do-you-do to Verrall! But they
would certainly have to go if Mr Lackersteen went. It
would never do to leave him to himself. Satan finds some
mischief still, even in the jungle. A ripple like fire ran down
the line of sepoys; they were unfixing bayonets before
marching away. The dusty rank turned left, saluted, and
marched off in column of fours. The orderlies were
coming from the police lines with the ponies and polo-sticks.
Mrs Lackersteen took a heroic decision.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘we’ll take a short-cut across the
maidan. It’s so much quicker than going right round by the
road.’

It was quicker by about fifty yards, but no one ever went
that way on foot, because of the grass-seeds that got into
one’s stockings. Mrs Lackersteen plunged boldly into the
grass, and then, dropping even the pretence of making for
the Club, took a bee-line for Verrall, Elizabeth following.
Either woman would have died on the rack rather than
admit that she was doing anything but take a short-cut.
Verrall saw them coming, swore, and reined in his pony.
He could not very well cut them dead now that they were
coming openly to accost him. The damned cheek of these
women! He rode slowly towards them with a sulky expression
on his face, chivvying the polo-ball with small
strokes.

‘Good morning, Mr Verrall!’ Mrs Lackersteen called out
in a voice of saccharine, twenty yards away.

‘Morning!’ he returned surlily, having seen her face and
set her down as one of the usual scraggy old boiling-fowls
of an Indian station.

The next moment Elizabeth came level with her aunt.
She had taken off her spectacles and was swinging her Terai
hat in her hand. What did she care for sunstroke? She was
perfectly aware of the prettiness of her cropped hair. A puff
of wind—oh, those blessed breaths of wind, coming from
nowhere in the stifling hot-weather days!—had caught her
cotton frock and blown it against her, showing the outline
of her body, slender and strong like a tree. Her sudden
appearance beside the older, sun-scorched woman was a
revelation to Verrall. He started so that the Arab mare felt
it and would have reared on her hind legs, and he had to
tighten the rein. He had not known until this moment, not
having bothered to inquire, that there were any young
women in Kyauktada.

‘My niece,’ Mrs Lackersteen said.

He did not answer, but he had thrown away the polo-stick,
and he took off his topi. For a moment he and
Elizabeth remained gazing at one another. Their fresh faces
were unmarred in the pitiless light. The grass-seeds were
tickling Elizabeth’s shins so that it was agony, and without
her spectacles she could only see Verrall and his horse as a
whitish blur. But she was happy, happy! Her heart
bounded and the blood flowed into her face, dyeing it like
a thin wash of aquarelle. The thought, ‘A peach, by Christ!’
moved almost fiercely through Verrall’s mind. The sullen
Indians, holding the ponies’ heads, gazed curiously at the
scene, as though the beauty of the two young people had
made its impression even on them.

Mrs Lackersteen broke the silence, which had lasted half
a minute.

‘You know, Mr Verrall,’ she said somewhat archly, ‘we
think it rather unkind of you to have neglected us poor
people all this time. When we’re so pining for a new face
at the Club.’

He was still looking at Elizabeth when he answered, but
the change in his voice was remarkable.

‘I’ve been meaning to come for some days. Been so
fearfully busy—getting my men into their quarters and all
that. I’m sorry,’ he added—he was not in the habit of
apologising, but really, he had decided, this girl was rather
an exceptional bit of stuff—‘I’m sorry about not answering
your note.’

‘Oh, not at all! We quite understood. But we do hope
we shall see you at the Club this evening? Because you
know,’ she concluded even more archly, ‘if you disappoint
us any longer, we shall begin to think you rather a naughty
young man!’

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll be there this evening.’

There was not much more to be said, and the two
women walked on to the Club. But they stayed barely five
minutes. The grass-seeds were causing their shins such
torment that they were obliged to hurry home and change
their stockings at once.

Verrall kept his promise and was at the Club that evening.
He arrived a little earlier than the others, and he had
made his presence thoroughly felt before being in the place
five minutes. As Ellis entered the Club the old butler darted
out of the card-room and waylaid him. He was in great
distress, the tears rolling down his cheeks.

‘Sir! Sir!’

‘What the devil’s the matter now?’ said Ellis.

‘Sir! Sir! New master been beating me, sir!’

‘What?’

‘Beating me, sir!’ His voice rose on the ‘beating’ with a
long tearful wail—‘be-e-e-eating!’

‘Beating you? Do you good. Who’s been beating you?’

‘New master, sir. Military Police sahib. Beating me with
his foot, sir—here!’ He rubbed himself behind.

‘Hell!’ said Ellis.

He went into the lounge. Verrall was reading the Field,
and invisible except for Palm Beach trouser-ends and two
lustrous sooty-brown shoes. He did not trouble to stir at
hearing someone else come into the room. Ellis halted.

‘Here, you—what’s your name—Verrall!’

‘What?’

‘Have you been kicking our butler?’

Verrall’s sulky blue eye appeared round the corner of the
Field, like the eye of a crustacean peering round a rock.

‘What?’ he repeated shortly.

‘I said, have you been kicking our bloody butler?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then what the hell do you mean by it?’

‘Beggar gave me his lip. I sent him for a whisky and
soda, and he brought it warm. I told him to put ice in it,
and he wouldn’t—talked some bloody rot about saving the
last piece of ice. So I kicked his bottom. Serve him right.’

Ellis turned quite grey. He was furious. The butler was
a piece of Club property and not to be kicked by strangers.
But what most angered Ellis was the thought that Verrall
quite possibly suspected him of being sorry for the butler—in
fact, of disapproving of kicking as such.

‘Serve him right? I dare say it bloody well did serve him
right. But what in hell’s that got to do with it? Who are
you to come kicking our servants?’

‘You damned, insolent young tick, what’s it got to do
with you if he needed kicking? You’re not even a member
of this Club. It’s our job to kick the servants not yours.’

Verrall lowered the Field and brought his other eye into
play. His surly voice did not change its tone. He never lost
his temper with a European; it was never necessary.

‘My good chap, if anyone gives me lip I kick his bottom.
Do you want me to kick yours?’

All the fire went out of Ellis suddenly. He was not afraid,
he had never been afraid in his life; only, Verrall’s eye was
too much for him. That eye could make you feel as though
you were under Niagara! The oaths wilted on Ellis’s lips;
his voice almost deserted him. He said querulously and
even plaintively:

‘But damn it, he was quite right not to give you the last
bit of ice. Do you think we only buy ice for you? We can
only get the stuff twice a week in this place.’

‘Rotten bad management on your part, then,’ said
Verrall, and retired behind the Field, content to let the
matter drop.

Ellis was helpless. The calm way in which Verrall went
back to his paper, quite genuinely forgetting Ellis’s existence,
was maddening. Should he not give the young swab
a good, rousing kick?

But somehow, the kick was never given. Verrall had
earned many kicks in his life, but he had never received one
and probably never would. Ellis seeped helplessly back to
the card-room, to work off his feelings on the butler,
leaving Verrall in possession of the lounge.

As Mr Macgregor entered the Club gate he heard the
sound of music. Yellow chinks of lantern-light showed
through the creeper that covered the tennis-screen. Mr
Macgregor was in a happy mood this evening. He had
promised himself a good, long talk with Miss Lackersteen—such
an exceptionally intelligent girl, that!—and he had
a most interesting anecdote to tell her (as a matter of fact,
it had already seen the light in one of those little articles of
his in Blackwood’s) about a dacoity that had happened in
Sagaing in 1913. She would love to hear it, he knew. He
rounded the tennis-screen expectantly. On the court, in the
mingled light of the waning moon and of lanterns slung
among the trees, Verrall and Elizabeth were dancing. The
chokras had brought out chairs and a table for the gramophone,
and round these the other Europeans were sitting
or standing. As Mr Macgregor halted at the corner of the
court, Verrall and Elizabeth circled round and glided past
him, barely a yard away. They were dancing very close
together, her body bent backwards under his. Neither
noticed Mr Macgregor.

Mr Macgregor made his way round the court. A chilly,
desolate feeling had taken possession of his entrails. Good-bye,
then, to his talk with Miss Lackersteen! It was an effort
to screw his face into its usual facetious good-humour as
he came up to the table.

‘A Terpsichorean evening!’ he remarked in a voice that
was doleful in spite of himself.

No one answered. They were all watching the pair on
the tennis court. Utterly oblivious of the others, Elizabeth
and Verrall glided round and round, round and round,
their shoes sliding easily on the slippery concrete. Verrall
danced as he rode, with matchless grace. The gramophone
was playing ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home’, which was
then going round the world like a pestilence and had got
as far as Burma:

Show me the way to go home,

I’m tired an’ I wanna go to bed;

I had a little drink ’bout an hour ago,

An’ it’s gone right to my head! etc.

The dreary, depressing trash floated out among the
shadowy trees and the streaming scents of flowers, over
and over again, for Mrs Lackersteen was putting the
gramophone needle back to the start when it neared the
centre. The moon climbed higher, very yellow, looking,
as she rose from the murk of dark clouds at the horizon,
like a sick woman creeping out of bed. Verrall and Elizabeth
danced on and on, indefatigably, a pale voluptuous
shape in the gloom. They moved in perfect unison like
some single animal. Mr Macgregor, Ellis, Westfield and
Mr Lackersteen stood watching them, their hands in their
pockets, finding nothing to say. The mosquitoes came
nibbling at their ankles. Someone called for drinks, but the
whisky was like ashes in their mouths. The bowels of all
four older men were twisted with bitter envy.

Verrall did not ask Mrs Lackersteen for a dance, nor,
when he and Elizabeth finally sat down, did he take any
notice of the other Europeans. He merely monopolised
Elizabeth for half an hour more, and then with a brief good
night to the Lackersteens and not a word to anyone else,
left the Club. The long dance with Verrall had left Elizabeth
in a kind of dream. He had asked her to come out
riding with him! He was going to lend her one of his
ponies! She never even noticed that Ellis, angered by her
behaviour, was doing his best to be openly rude. It was late
when the Lackersteens got home, but there was no sleep
yet for Elizabeth or her aunt. They were feverishly at work
till midnight, shortening a pair of Mrs Lackersteen’s
jodhpurs, and letting out the calves, to fit Elizabeth.

‘I hope, dear, you can ride a horse?’ said Mrs Lackersteen.

‘Oh, of course! I’ve ridden ever such a lot, at Home.’

She had ridden perhaps a dozen times in all, when she
was sixteen. No matter, she would manage somehow! She
would have ridden a tiger, if Verrall were to accompany
her.

When at last the jodhpurs were finished and Elizabeth
had tried them on, Mrs Lackersteen sighed to see her. She
looked ravishing in jodhpurs, simply ravishing! And to
think that in only a day or two they had got to go back
to camp, for weeks, months perhaps, leaving Kyauktada
and this most desirable young man! The pity of it! As they
moved to go upstairs Mrs Lackersteen paused at the door.
It had come into her head to make a great and painful
sacrifice. She took Elizabeth by the shoulders and kissed her
with a more real affection than she had ever shown.

‘My dear, it would be such a shame for you to go away
from Kyauktada just now!’

‘It would, rather.’

‘Then I’ll tell you what, dear. We won’t go back to that
horrid jungle! Your uncle shall go alone. You and I shall
stay in Kyauktada.’

XIX

The heat was growing worse and worse. April was nearly
over, but there was no hope of rain for another three
weeks, five weeks it might be. Even the lovely transient
dawns were spoiled by the thought of the long, blinding
hours to come, when one’s head would ache and the glare
would penetrate through every covering and glue up one’s
eyelids with restless sleep. No one, Oriental or European,
could keep awake in the heat of the day without a struggle;
at night, on the other hand, with the howling dogs and the
pools of sweat that collected and tormented one’s prickly
heat, no one could sleep. The mosquitoes at the Club were
so bad that sticks of incense had to be kept burning in all
the corners, and the women sat with their legs in pillow-slips.
Only Verrall and Elizabeth were indifferent to the
heat. They were young and their blood was fresh, and
Verrall was too stoical and Elizabeth too happy to pay any
attention to the climate.

There was much bickering and scandalmongering at
the Club these days. Verrall had put everyone’s nose out
of joint. He had taken to coming to the Club for an hour
or two in the evenings, but he ignored the other members,
refused the drinks they offered him, and answered attempts
at conversation with surly monosyllables. He would sit
under the punkah in the chair that had once been sacred
to Mrs Lackersteen, reading such of the papers as interested
him, until Elizabeth came, when he would dance and talk
with her for an hour or two and then make off without
so much as a good-night to anybody. Meanwhile Mr
Lackersteen was alone in his camp, and, according to the
rumours which drifted back to Kyauktada, consoling his
loneliness with quite a miscellany of Burmese women.

Elizabeth and Verrall went out riding together almost
every evening now. Verrall’s mornings, after parade, were
sacred to polo practice, but he had decided that it was
worth while giving up the evenings to Elizabeth. She took
naturally to riding, just as she had to shooting; she even had
the assurance to tell Verrall that she had ‘hunted quite a lot’
at Home. He saw at a glance that she was lying, but at least
she did not ride so badly as to be a nuisance to him.

They used to ride up the red road into the jungle, ford
the stream by the big pyinkado tree covered with orchids,
and then follow the narrow cart-track, where the dust was
soft and the horses could gallop. It was stifling hot in the
dusty jungle, and there were always mutterings of far-away,
rainless thunder. Small martins flitted round the
horses, keeping pace with them, to hawk for the flies their
hooves turned up. Elizabeth rode the bay pony, Verrall the
white. On the way home they would walk their sweat-dark
horses abreast, so close that sometimes his knee
brushed against hers, and talk. Verrall could drop his
offensive manner and talk amicably enough when he
chose, and he did choose with Elizabeth.

Ah, the joy of those rides together! The joy of being on
horseback and in the world of horses—the world of hunting
and racing, polo and pigsticking! If Elizabeth had loved
Verrall for nothing else, she would have loved him for
bringing horses into her life. She tormented him to talk
about horses as once she had tormented Flory to talk about
shooting. Verrall was no talker, it was true. A few gruff,
jerky sentences about polo and pigsticking, and a catalogue
of Indian stations and the names of regiments, were the best
he could do. And yet somehow the little he said could thrill
Elizabeth as all Flory’s talk had never done. The mere sight
of him on horseback was more evocative than any words.
An aura of horsemanship and soldiering surrounded him.
In his tanned face and his hard, straight body Elizabeth saw
all the romance, the splendid panache of a cavalryman’s
life. She saw the North-West Frontier and the Cavalry
Club—she saw the polo grounds and the parched barrack
yards, and the brown squadrons of horsemen galloping
with their long lances poised and the trains of their pagris
streaming; she heard the bugle-calls and the jingle of spurs,
and the regimental bands playing outside the messrooms
while the officers sat at dinner in their stiff, gorgeous
uniforms. How splendid it was, that equestrian world, how
splendid! And it was her world, she belonged to it, she had
been born for it. These days, she lived, thought, dreamed
horses, almost like Verrall himself. The time came when
she not only told her taradiddle about having ‘hunted quite
a lot’, she even came near believing it.

In every possible way they got on so well together. He
never bored her and fretted her as Flory had done. (As a
matter of fact, she had almost forgotten Flory, these days;
when she thought of him, it was for some reason always
his birthmark that she remembered.) It was a bond between
them that Verrall detested anything ‘highbrow’
even more than she did. He told her once that he had not
read a book since he was eighteen, and that indeed he
‘loathed’ books; ‘except, of course, Jorrocks and all that’.
On the evening of their third or fourth ride they were
parting at the Lackersteens’ gate. Verrall had successfully
resisted all Mrs Lackersteen’s invitations to meals; he had
not yet set foot inside the Lackersteens’ house, and he did
not intend to do so. As the syce was taking Elizabeth’s pony,
Verrall said:

‘I tell you what. Next time we come out you shall ride
Belinda. I’ll ride the chestnut. I think you’ve got on well
enough not to go and cut Belinda’s mouth up.’

Belinda was the Arab mare. Verrall had owned her two
years, and till this moment he had never once allowed
anyone else to mount her, not even the syce. It was the
greatest favour that he could imagine. And so perfectly did
Elizabeth appreciate Verrall’s point of view that she understood
the greatness of the favour, and was thankful.

The next evening, as they rode home side by side,
Verrall put his arm round Elizabeth’s shoulder, lifted her
out of the saddle and pulled her against him. He was very
strong. He dropped the bridle, and, with his free hand,
lifted her face up to meet his; their mouths met. For a
moment he held her so, then lowered her to the ground
and slipped from his horse. They stood embraced, their
thin, drenched shirts pressed together, the two bridles held
in the crook of his arm.

It was about the same time that Flory, twenty miles
away, decided to come back to Kyauktada. He was standing
at the jungle’s edge by the bank of a dried-up stream,
where he had walked to tire himself, watching some tiny,
nameless finches eating the seeds of the tall grasses. The
cocks were chrome-yellow, the hens like hen sparrows.
Too tiny to bend the stalks, they came whirring towards
them, seized them in mid-flight and bore them to the
ground by their own weight. Flory watched the birds
incuriously, and almost hated them because they could
light no spark of interest in him. In his idleness he flung
his dah at them, scaring them away. If she were here, if she
were here! Everything—birds, trees, flowers, everything—was
deadly and meaningless because she was not here.
As the days passed the knowledge that he had lost her had
grown surer and more actual until it poisoned every
moment.

He loitered a little way into the jungle, flicking at
creepers with his dah. His limbs felt slack and leaden. He
noticed a wild vanilla plant trailing over a bush, and bent
down to sniff at its slender, fragrant pods. The scent
brought him a feeling of staleness and deadly ennui. Alone,
alone, in the sea of life enisled! The pain was so great that
he struck his fist against a tree, jarring his arm and splitting
two knuckles. He must go back to Kyauktada. It was folly,
for barely a fortnight had passed since the scene between
them, and his only chance was to give her time to forget
it. Still, he must go back. He could not stay any longer in
this deadly place, alone with his thoughts among the endless,
mindless leaves.

A happy thought occurred to him. He could take Elizabeth
the leopard-skin that was being cured for her in the
jail. It would be a pretext for seeing her, and when one
comes bearing gifts one is generally listened to. This time
he would not let her cut him short without a word. He
would explain, extenuate—make her realise that she had
been unjust to him. It was not right that she should
condemn him because of Ma Hla May, whom he had
turned out of doors for Elizabeth’s own sake. Surely she
must forgive him when she heard the truth of the story?
And this time she should hear it; he would force her to listen
to him if he had to hold her by the arms while he did it.

He went back the same evening. It was a twenty-mile
journey, by rutted cart-tracks, but Flory decided to march
by night, giving the reason that it was cooler. The servants
almost mutinied at the idea of a night-march, and at the
very last moment old Sammy collapsed in a semi-genuine
fit and had to be plied with gin before he could start. It was
a moonless night. They made their way by the light of
lanterns, in which Flo’s eyes gleamed like emeralds and the
bullocks’ eyes like moonstones. When the sun was up the
servants halted to gather sticks and cook breakfast, but
Flory was in a fever to be at Kyauktada, and he hurried
ahead. He had no feeling of tiredness. The thought of the
leopard-skin had filled him with extravagant hopes. He
crossed the glittering river by sampan and went straight to
Dr Veraswami’s bungalow, getting there about ten.

The doctor invited him to breakfast, and—having
shooed the women into some suitable hiding-place—took
him into his own bathroom so that he could wash and
shave. At breakfast the doctor was very excited and full of
denunciations of ‘the crocodile’; for it appeared that the
pseudo-rebellion was now on the point of breaking out.
It was not till after breakfast that Flory had an opportunity
to mention the leopard-skin.

‘Oh, by the way, doctor. What about that skin I sent
to the jail to be cured? Is it done yet?’

‘Ah——’ said the doctor in a slightly disconcerted
manner, rubbing his nose. He went inside the house—they
were breakfasting on the veranda, for the doctor’s
wife had protested violently against Flory being brought
indoors—and came back in a moment with the skin rolled
up in a bundle.

‘Ass a matter of fact——’ he began, unrolling it.

‘Oh, doctor!’

The skin had been utterly ruined. It was as stiff as
cardboard, with the leather cracked and the fur discoloured
and even rubbed off in patches. It also stank abominably.
Instead of being cured, it had been converted into a piece
of rubbish.

‘Oh, doctor! What a mess they’ve made of it! How the
devil did it happen?’

‘I am so sorry, my friend! I wass about to apologise. It
wass the best we could do. There iss no one at the jail who
knows how to cure skins now.’

‘But, damn it, that convict used to cure them so beautifully!’

‘Ah, yes. But he iss gone from us these three weeks,
alas.’

‘Gone? I thought he was doing seven years?’

‘What? Did you not hear, my friend? I thought you
knew who it wass that used to cure the skins. It wass Nga
Shwe O.’

‘Nga Shwe O?’

‘The dacoit who escaped with U Po Kyin’s assistance.’

‘Oh, hell!’

The mishap had daunted him dreadfully. Nevertheless,
in the afternoon, having bathed and put on a clean suit, he
went up to the Lackersteens’ house, at about four. It was
very early to call, but he wanted to make sure of catching
Elizabeth before she went down to the Club. Mrs Lackersteen,
who had been asleep and was not prepared for
visitors, received him with an ill grace, not even asking him
to sit down.

‘I’m afraid Elizabeth isn’t down yet. She’s dressing to go
out riding. Wouldn’t it be better if you left a message?’

‘I’d like to see her, if you don’t mind. I’ve brought her
the skin of that leopard we shot together.’

Mrs Lackersteen left him standing up in the drawing-room,
feeling lumpish and abnormally large as one does
at such times. However, she fetched Elizabeth, taking the
opportunity of whispering to her outside the door: ‘Get rid
of that dreadful man as soon as you can, dear. I can’t bear
him about the house at this time of day.’

As Elizabeth entered the room Flory’s heart pounded so
violently that a reddish mist passed behind his eyes. She was
wearing a silk shirt and jodhpurs, and she was a little
sunburned. Even in his memory she had never been so
beautiful. He quailed; on the instant he was lost—every
scrap of his screwed-up courage had fled. Instead of stepping
forward to meet her he actually backed away. There
was a fearful crash behind him; he had upset an occasional
table and sent a bowl of zinnias hurtling across the floor.

‘I’m so sorry!’ he exclaimed in horror.

‘Oh, not at all! Please don’t worry about it!’

She helped him to pick up the table, chattering all the
while as gaily and easily as though nothing had happened:
‘You have been away a long time, Mr Flory! You’re quite
a stranger! We’ve so missed you at the Club!’ etc. etc. She
was italicising every other word, with that deadly, glittering
brightness that a woman puts on when she is dodging
a moral obligation. He was terrified of her. He could not
even look her in the face. She took up a box of cigarettes
and offered him one, but he refused it. His hand was
shaking too much to take it.

‘I’ve brought you that skin,’ he said flatly.

He unrolled it on the table they had just picked up. It
looked so shabby and miserable that he wished he had
never brought it. She came close to him to examine the
skin, so close that her flowerlike cheek was not a foot from
his own, and he could feel the warmth of her body. So
great was his fear of her that he stepped hurriedly away.
And in the same moment she too stepped back with a
wince of disgust, having caught the foul odour of the skin.
It shamed him terribly. It was almost as though it had been
himself and not the skin that stank.

‘Thank you ever so much, Mr Flory!’ She had put
another yard between herself and the skin. ‘Such a lovely
big skin, isn’t it?’

‘It was, but they’ve spoiled it, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh no! I shall love having it! Are you back in Kyauktada
for long? How dreadfully hot it must have been in
camp!’

‘Yes, it’s been very hot.’

For three minutes they actually talked of the weather.
He was helpless. All that he had promised himself to say,
all his arguments and pleadings, had withered in his
throat. ‘You fool, you fool,’ he thought, ‘what are you
doing? Did you come twenty miles for this? Go on, say
what you came to say! Seize her in your arms; make her
listen, kick her, beat her—anything sooner than let her
choke you with this drivel!’ But it was hopeless, hopeless.
Not a word could his tongue utter except futile trivialities.
How could he plead or argue, when that bright easy air
of hers, that dragged every word to the level of Club-chatter,
silenced him before he spoke? Where do they learn
it, that dreadful tee-heeing brightness? In these brisk
modern girls’ schools, no doubt. The piece of carrion on
the table made him more ashamed every moment. He
stood there almost voiceless, lumpishly ugly with his face
yellow and creased after the sleepless night, and his birthmark
like a smear of dirt.

She got rid of him after a very few minutes. ‘And now,
Mr Flory, if you don’t mind, I ought really——’

He mumbled rather than said, ‘Won’t you come out
with me again some time? Walking, shooting—something?’

‘I have so little time nowadays! All my evenings seem
to be full. This evening I’m going out riding. With Mr
Verrall,’ she added.

It was possible that she added that in order to wound
him. This was the first that he had heard of her friendship
with Verrall. He could not keep the dead, flat tone of envy
out of his voice as he said:

‘Do you go out riding much with Verrall?’

‘Almost every evening. He’s such a wonderful horseman!
And he has absolute strings of polo ponies!’

‘Ah. And of course I have no polo ponies.’

It was the first thing he had said that even approached
seriousness, and it did no more than offend her. However,
she answered him with the same gay easy air as before, and
then showed him out. Mrs Lackersteen came back to the
drawing-room, sniffed the air, and immediately ordered
the servants to take the reeking leopard-skin outside and
burn it.

Flory lounged at his garden gate, pretending to feed the
pigeons. He could not deny himself the pain of seeing
Elizabeth and Verrall start out on their ride. How vulgarly,
how cruelly she had behaved to him! It is dreadful when
people will not even have the decency to quarrel. Presently
Verrall rode up to the Lackersteens’ house on the white
pony, with a syce riding the chestnut, then there was a
pause, then they emerged together, Verrall on the chestnut
pony, Elizabeth on the white, and trotted quickly up the
hill. They were chattering and laughing, her silk-shirted
shoulder very close to his. Neither looked towards Flory.

When they had disappeared into the jungle, Flory still
loafed in the garden. The glare was waning to yellow. The
mali was at work grubbing up the English flowers, most
of which had died, slain by too much sunshine, and planting
balsams, cockscombs, and more zinnias. An hour
passed, and a melancholy, earth-coloured Indian loitered
up the drive, dressed in a loincloth and a salmon-pink pagri
on which a washing-basket was balanced. He laid down
his basket and salaamed to Flory.

‘Who are you?’

‘Book-wallah, sahib.’

The book-wallah was an itinerant pedlar of books who
wandered from station to station throughout Upper
Burma. His system of exchange was that for any book in
his bundle you gave him four annas, and any other book.
Not quite any book, however, for the book-wallah,
though analphabetic, had learned to recognise and refuse
a Bible.

‘No, sahib,’ he would say plaintively, ‘no. This book’
(he would turn it over disapprovingly in his flat brown
hands) ‘this book with a black cover and gold letters—this
one I cannot take. I know not how it is, but all sahibs are
offering me this book, and none are taking it. What can
it be that is in this black book? Some evil, undoubtedly.’

‘Turn out your trash,’ Flory said.

He hunted among them for a good thriller—Edgar
Wallace or Agatha Christie or something; anything to still
the deadly restlessness that was at his heart. As he bent over
the books he saw that both Indians were exclaiming and
pointing towards the edge of the jungle.

‘Dekho!’ said the mali in his plum-in-the-mouth voice.

The two ponies were emerging from the jungle. But
they were riderless. They came trotting down the hill with
the silly guilty air of a horse that has escaped from its
master, with the stirrups swinging and clashing under their
bellies.

Flory remained unconsciously clasping one of the books
against his chest. Verrall and Elizabeth had dismounted. It
was not an accident; by no effort of the mind could one
imagine Verrall falling off his horse. They had dismounted,
and the ponies had escaped.

They had dismounted—for what? Ah, but he knew for
what! It was not a question of suspecting; he knew. He
could see the whole thing happening, in one of those
hallucinations that are so perfect in detail, so vilely obscene,
that they are past bearing. He threw the book violently
down and made for the house, leaving the book-wallah
disappointed. The servants heard him moving about indoors,
and presently he called for a bottle of whisky. He
had a drink and it did him no good. Then he filled a
tumbler two-thirds full, added enough water to make it
drinkable, and swallowed it. The filthy, nauseous dose was
no sooner down his throat than he repeated it. He had done
the same thing in camp once, years ago, when he was
tortured by toothache and three hundred miles from a
dentist. At seven Ko S’la came in as usual to say that the
bathwater was hot. Flory was lying in one of the long
chairs, with his coat off and his shirt torn open at the
throat.

‘Your bath, thakin,’ said Ko S’la.

Flory did not answer, and Ko S’la touched his arm,
thinking him asleep. Flory was much too drunk to move.
The empty bottle had rolled across the floor, leaving a trail
of whisky-drops behind it. Ko S’la called for Ba Pe and
picked up the bottle, clicking his tongue.

‘Just look at this! He has drunk more than three-quarters
of a bottle!’

‘What, again? I thought he had given up drinking?’

‘It is that accursed woman, I suppose. Now we must
carry him carefully. You take his heels, I’ll take his head.
That’s right. Hoist him up!’

They carried Flory into the other room and laid him
gently on the bed.

‘Is he really going to marry this “Ingaleikma”?’ said Ba
Pe.

‘Heaven knows. She is the mistress of the young police
officer at present, so I was told. Their ways are not our
ways. I think I know what he will be wanting tonight,’
he added as he undid Flory’s braces—for Ko S’la had the
art, so necessary in a bachelor’s servant, of undressing his
master without waking him.

The servants were rather more pleased than not to see this
return to bachelor habits. Flory woke about midnight,
naked in a pool of sweat. His head felt as though some
large, sharp-cornered metal object were bumping about
inside it. The mosquito net was up, and a young woman
was sitting beside the bed fanning him with a wicker fan.
She had an agreeable negroid face, bronze-gold in the
candlelight. She explained that she was a prostitute, and
that Ko S’la had engaged her on his own responsibility for
a fee of ten rupees.

Flory’s head was splitting. ‘For God’s sake get me something
to drink,’ he said feebly to the woman. She brought
him some soda-water which Ko S’la had cooled in readiness,
and soaked a towel and put a wet compress round his
forehead. She was a fat, good-tempered creature. She told
him that her name was Ma Sein Galay, and that besides
plying her other trade she sold paddy baskets in the bazaar
near Li Yeik’s shop. Flory’s head felt better presently, and
he asked for a cigarette; whereupon Ma Sein Galay, having
fetched the cigarette, said naïvely, ‘Shall I take my clothes
off now, thakin?’

Why not? he thought dimly. He made room for her in
the bed. But when he smelled the familiar scent of garlic
and coco-nut oil, something painful happened within him,
and with his head pillowed on Ma Sein Galay’s fat shoulder
he actually wept, a thing he had not done since he was
fifteen years old.

XX

Next morning there was great excitement in Kyauktada,
for the long-rumoured rebellion had at last broken
out. Flory heard only a vague report of it at the time. He
had gone back to camp as soon as he felt fit to march after
the drunken night, and it was not until several days later
that he learned the true history of the rebellion, in a long,
indignant letter from Dr Veraswami.

The doctor’s epistolary style was queer. His syntax was
shaky and he was as free with capital letters as a seventeenth-century
divine, while in the use of italics he rivalled Queen
Victoria. There were eight pages of his small but sprawling
handwriting.

My dear Friend (the letter ran),—You will
much regret to hear that the wiles of the crocodile have
matured. The rebellion—the so-called rebellion—is all
over and finished. And it has been, alas! a more Bloody
affair than I had hoped should have been the case.

All has fallen out as I have prophesied to you it would
be. On the day when you came back to Kyauktada U
Po Kyin’s spies have informed him that the poor unfortunate
men whom he have Deluded are assembling
in the jungle near Thongwa. The same night he sets out
secretly with U Lugale, the Police Inspector, who is as
great a Rogue as he, if that could be, and twelve constables.
They make a swift raid upon Thongwa and
surprise the rebels, of whom there are only Seven!! in
a ruined field hut in the jungle. Also Mr Maxwell, who
have heard rumours of the rebellion, came across from
his camp bringing his Rifle and was in time to join U
Po Kyin and the police in their attack on the hut. The
next morning the clerk Ba Sein, who is U Po Kyin’s
jackall and dirty worker, have orders to raise the cry of
rebellion as Sensationally as possible, which was done,
and Mr Macgregor, Mr Westfield and Lieutenant
Verrall all rush out to Thongwa carrying fifty sepoys
armed with rifles besides Civil Police. But they arrive
to find it is all over and U Po Kyin was sitting under
a big teak tree in the middle of the village and putting
on airs and lecturing the villagers, whereat they are all
bowing very frightened and touching the ground with
their foreheads and swearing they will be forever loyal
to the Government, and the rebellion is already at an
end. The so-called weiksa, who is no other than a circus
conjurer and the minion of U Po Kyin, have vanished
for parts unknown, but six rebels have been Caught. So
there is an end.

Also I should inform you that there was most regrettably
a Death. Mr Maxwell was I think too anxious to
use his Rifle and when one of the rebels try to run away
he fired and shoot him in the abdomen, at which he
died. I think the villagers have some bad feeling towards
Mr Maxwell because of it. But from the point of view
legal all is well for Mr Maxwell, because the men were
undoubtedly conspiring against the Government.

Ah, but, my Friend, I trust that you understand how
disastrous may all this be for me! You will realise, I
think, what is its bearing upon the Contest between U
Po Kyin and myself, and the supreme leg-up it must give
to him. It is the triumph of the crocodile. U Po Kyin is now
the Hero of the district. He is the pet of the Europeans.
I am told that even Mr Ellis has praised his conduct. If
you could witness the abominable Conceitedness and
the lies he is now telling as to how there were not seven
rebels but Two Hundred!! and how he rushed upon
them revolver in hand—he who was only directing
operations from a safe distance while the police and Mr
Maxwell creep up upon the hut—you would find it
veritably Nauseous I assure you. He has had the
effrontery to send in an official report of the matter
which started, ‘By my loyal promptitude and reckless
daring’, and I hear that positively he had had this Conglomeration
of lies written out in readiness days before
the occurrence. It is Disgusting. And to think that now
when he is at the Height of his triumph he will again
begin to calumniate me with all the venom at his disposal
etc. etc.

The rebels’ entire stock of weapons had been captured.
The armoury with which, when their followers were
assembled, they had proposed to march upon Kyauktada,
consisted of the following:

Item, one shotgun with a damaged left barrel, stolen
from a Forest Officer three years earlier.

Item, six home-made guns with barrels of zinc piping
stolen from the railway. These could be fired, after a
fashion, by thrusting a nail through the touch-hole and
striking it with a stone.

Item, thirty-nine twelve-bore cartridges.

Item, eleven dummy guns carved out of teakwood.

Item, some large Chinese crackers which were to have
been fired in terrorem.

Later, two of the rebels were sentenced to fifteen years’
transportation, three to three years’ imprisonment and
twenty-five lashes, and one to two years’ imprisonment.

The whole miserable rebellion was so obviously at an
end that the Europeans were not considered to be in any
danger, and Maxwell had gone back to his camp unguarded.
Flory intended to stay in camp until the rains
broke, or at least until the general meeting at the Club. He
had promised to be in for that, to propose the doctor’s
election; though now, with his own trouble to think of,
the whole business of the intrigue between U Po Kyin and
the doctor sickened him.

More weeks crawled by. The heat was dreadful now.
The overdue rain seemed to have bred a fever in the air.
Flory was out of health, and worked incessantly, worrying
over petty jobs that should have been left to the overseer,
and making the coolies and even the servants hate him. He
drank gin at all hours, but not even drinking could distract
him now. The vision of Elizabeth in Verrall’s arms haunted
him like a neuralgia or an earache. At any moment it
would come upon him, vivid and disgusting, scattering his
thoughts, wrenching him back from the brink of sleep,
turning his food to dust in his mouth. At times he flew into
savage rages, and once even struck Ko S’la. What was
worse than all was the detail—the always filthy detail—in
which the imagined scene appeared. The very perfection
of the detail seemed to prove that it was true.

Is there anything in the world more graceless, more
dishonouring, than to desire a woman whom you will
never have? Throughout all these weeks Flory’s mind held
hardly a thought which was not murderous or obscene. It
is the common effect of jealousy. Once he had loved
Elizabeth spiritually, sentimentally indeed, desiring her
sympathy more than her caresses; now, when he had lost
her, he was tormented by the basest physical longing. He
did not even idealise her any longer. He saw her now
almost as she was—silly, snobbish, heartless—and it made
no difference to his longing for her. Does it ever make any
difference? At nights when he lay awake, his bed dragged
outside the tent for coolness, looking at the velvet dark
from which the barking of a gyi sometimes sounded, he
hated himself for the images that inhabited his mind. It was
so base, this envying of the better man who had beaten
him. For it was only envy—even jealousy was too good
a name for it. What right had he to be jealous? He had
offered himself to a girl who was too young and pretty for
him, and she had turned him down rightly. He had got
the snub he deserved. Nor was there any appeal from that
decision; nothing would ever make him young again, or
take away his birthmark and his decade of lonely debaucheries.
He could only stand and look on while the
better man took her, and envy him, like—but the simile
was not even mentionable. Envy is a horrible thing. It is
unlike all other kinds of suffering in that there is no disguising
it, no elevating it into tragedy. It is more than
merely painful, it is disgusting.

But meanwhile, was it true, what he suspected? Had
Verrall really become Elizabeth’s lover? There is no knowing,
but on the whole the chances were against it, for, had
it been so, there would have been no concealing it in such
a place as Kyauktada. Mrs Lackersteen would probably
have guessed it, even if the others had not. One thing was
certain, however, and that was that Verrall had as yet made
no proposal of marriage. A week went by, two weeks,
three weeks; three weeks is a very long time in a small
Indian station. Verrall and Elizabeth rode together every
evening, danced together every night; yet Verrall had
never so much as entered the Lackersteens’ house. There
was endless scandal about Elizabeth, of course. All the
Orientals of the town had taken it for granted that she was
Verrall’s mistress. U Po Kyin’s version (he had a way of
being essentially right even when he was wrong in detail)
was that Elizabeth had been Flory’s concubine and had
deserted him for Verrall because Verrall paid her more.
Ellis, too, was inventing tales about Elizabeth that made Mr
Macgregor squirm. Mrs Lackersteen, as a relative, did not
hear these scandals, but she was growing nervous. Every
evening when Elizabeth came home from her ride she
would meet her hopefully, expecting the ‘Oh, aunt! What
do you think!’—and then the glorious news. But the news
never came, and however carefully she studied Elizabeth’s
face, she could divine nothing.

When three weeks had passed Mrs Lackersteen became
fretful and finally half angry. The thought of her husband,
alone—or rather, not alone—in his camp, was troubling
her. After all, she had sent him back to camp in order to
give Elizabeth her chance with Verrall (not that Mrs
Lackersteen would have put it so vulgarly as that). One
evening she began lecturing and threatening Elizabeth in
her oblique way. The conversation consisted of a sighing
monologue with very long pauses—for Elizabeth made no
answer whatever.

Mrs Lackersteen began with some general remarks,
apropos of a photograph in the Tatler, about these fast
modern girls who went about in beach pyjamas and all
that and made themselves so dreadfully cheap with men. A
girl, Mrs Lackersteen said, should never make herself too
cheap with a man; she should make herself—but the
opposite of ‘cheap’ seemed to be ‘expensive’, and that did
not sound at all right, so Mrs Lackersteen changed her tack.
She went on to tell Elizabeth about a letter she had had
from Home with further news of that poor, poor dear girl
who was out in Burma for a while and had so foolishly
neglected to get married. Her sufferings had been quite
heart-rending, and it just showed how glad a girl ought to
be to marry anyone, literally anyone. It appeared that the
poor, poor dear girl had lost her job and been practically
starving for a long time, and now she had actually had to
take a job as a common kitchen maid under a horrid,
vulgar cook who bullied her most shockingly. And it
seemed that the black beetles in the kitchen were simply
beyond belief! Didn’t Elizabeth think it too absolutely
dreadful? Black beetles!

Mrs Lackersteen remained silent for some time, to allow
the black beetles to sink in, before adding:

‘Such a pity that Mr Verrall will be leaving us when the
rains break. Kyauktada will seem quite empty without
him!’

‘When do the rains break, usually?’ said Elizabeth as
indifferently as she could manage.

‘About the beginning of June, up here. Only a week or
two now . . . My dear, it seems absurd to mention it again,
but I cannot get out of my head the thought of that poor,
poor dear girl in the kitchen among the black beetles!’

Black beetles recurred more than once in Mrs Lackersteen’s
conversation during the rest of the evening. It was
not until the following day that she remarked in the tone
of someone dropping an unimportant piece of gossip:

‘By the way, I believe Flory is coming back to Kyauktada
at the beginning of June. He said he was going to be
in for the general meeting at the Club. Perhaps we might
invite him to dinner some time.’

It was the first time that either of them had mentioned
Flory since the day when he had brought Elizabeth the
leopard-skin. After being virtually forgotten for several
weeks, he had returned to each woman’s mind, a depressing
pis aller.

Three days later Mrs Lackersteen sent word to her
husband to come back to Kyauktada. He had been in camp
long enough to earn a short spell in headquarters. He came
back, more florid than ever—sunburn, he explained—and
having acquired such a trembling of the hands that he
could barely light a cigarette. Nevertheless, that evening he
celebrated his return by manoeuvring Mrs Lackersteen out
of the house, coming into Elizabeth’s bedroom and
making a spirited attempt to rape her.

During all this time, unknown to anyone of importance,
further sedition was afoot. The weiksa (now far away,
peddling the philosopher’s stone to innocent villagers in
Martaban) had perhaps done his job a little better than he
intended. At any rate, there was a possibility of fresh
trouble—some isolated, futile outrage, probably. Even U
Po Kyin knew nothing of this yet. But as usual the gods
were fighting on his side, for any further rebellion would
make the first seem more serious than it had been, and so
add to his glory.

XXI

O Western wind, when wilt thou blow, that the small
rain down can rain? It was the first of June, the day of the
general meeting, and there had not been a drop of rain yet.
As Flory came up the Club path the sun of afternoon,
slanting beneath his hat-brim, was still savage enough to
scorch his neck uncomfortably. The mali staggered along
the path, his breast-muscles slippery with sweat, carrying
two kerosene-tins of water on a yoke. He dumped them
down, slopping a little water over his lank brown feet, and
salaamed to Flory.

Kyauktada was ringed almost round by hills, and these
caught the earlier showers, so that sometimes no rain fell
till almost the end of June. The earth of the flower-beds,
hoed into large untidy lumps, looked grey and hard as
concrete. Flory went into the lounge and found Westfield
loafing by the veranda, looking out over the river, for the
chicks had been rolled up. At the foot of the veranda a
chokra lay on his back in the sun pulling the punkah rope
with his heel and shading his face with a broad strip of
banana leaf.

‘Hullo, Flory! You’ve got thin as a rake.’

‘So’ve you.’

‘H’m, yes. Bloody weather. No appetite except for
booze. Christ, won’t I be glad when I hear the frogs start
croaking. Let’s have a spot before the others come. Butler!’

‘Do you know who’s coming to the meeting?’ Flory
said, when the butler had brought whisky and tepid soda.

‘Whole crowd, I believe. Lackersteen got back from
camp three days ago. By God, that man’s been having the
time of his life away from his missus! My inspector was
telling me about the goings-on at his camp. Tarts by the
score. Must have imported ’em specially from Kyauktada.
He’ll catch it all right when the old woman sees his Club-bill.
Eleven bottles of whisky sent out to his camp in a
fortnight.’

‘Is young Verrall coming?’

‘No, he’s only a temporary member. Not that he’d
trouble to come anyway, young tick. Maxwell won’t be
here either. Can’t leave camp just yet, he says. He sent word
Ellis was to speak for him if there’s any voting to be done.
Don’t suppose there’ll be anything to vote about, though,
eh?’ he added, looking at Flory obliquely, for both of them
remembered their previous quarrel on this subject.

‘I suppose it lies with Macgregor.’

‘What I mean is, Macgregor’ll have dropped that
bloody rot about electing a native member, eh? Not the
moment for it just now. After the rebellion and all that.’

‘What about the rebellion, by the way?’ said Flory. He
did not want to start wrangling about the doctor’s election
yet. There was going to be trouble and to spare in a few
minutes. ‘Any more news—are they going to have another
try, do you think?’

‘No. All over, I’m afraid. They caved in like the funks
they are. The whole district’s as quiet as a bloody girls’
school. Most disappointing.’

Flory’s heart missed a beat. He had heard Elizabeth’s
voice in the next room. Mr Macgregor came in at this
moment, Ellis and Mr Lackersteen following. This made
up the full quota, for the women members of the Club had
no votes. Mr Macgregor was already dressed in a silk suit,
and was carrying the Club account-books under his arm.
He managed to bring a sub-official air even into such petty
business as a Club meeting.

‘As we seem to be all here,’ he said after the usual
greetings, ‘shall we—ah—proceed with our labours?’

‘Before we apply ourselves to the agenda,’ said Mr
Macgregor when he had refused a drink and the others had
taken one, ‘I expect you will want me to run through the
accounts for the half-year?’

They did not want it particularly, but Mr Macgregor,
who enjoyed this kind of thing, ran through the accounts
with great thoroughness. Flory’s thoughts were wandering.
There was going to be such a row in a moment—oh,
such a devil of a row! They would be furious when they
found that he was proposing the doctor after all. And
Elizabeth was in the next room. God send she didn’t hear
the noise of the row when it came. It would make her
despise him all the more to see the others baiting him.
Would he see her this evening? Would she speak to him?
He gazed across the quarter-mile of gleaming river. By the
far bank a knot of men, one of them wearing a green
gaungbaung, were waiting beside a sampan. In the channel,
by the nearer bank, a huge, clumsy Indian barge struggled
with desperate slowness against the racing current. At each
stroke the ten rowers, Dravidian starvelings, ran forward
and plunged their long primitive oars, with heart-shaped
blades, into the water. They braced their meagre bodies,
then tugged, writhed, strained backwards like agonised
creatures of black rubber, and the ponderous hull crept
onwards a yard or two. Then the rowers sprang forward,
panting, to plunge their oars again before the current
should check her.

‘And now,’ said Mr Macgregor more gravely, ‘we
come to the main point of the agenda. That, of course, is
this—ah—distasteful question, which I am afraid must be
faced, of electing a native member to this Club. When we
discussed the matter before——’

‘What the hell!’

It was Ellis who had interrupted. He was so excited that
he had sprung to his feet.

‘What the hell! Surely we aren’t starting that over again?
Talk about electing a damned nigger to this Club, after
everything that’s happened! Good God, I thought even
Flory had dropped it by this time!’

‘Our friend Ellis appears surprised. The matter has been
discussed before, I believe.’

‘I should think it damned well was discussed before! And
we all said what we thought of it. By God——’

‘If our friend Ellis will sit down for a few moments—’
said Mr Macgregor tolerantly.

Ellis threw himself into his chair again, exclaiming,
‘Bloody rubbish!’ Beyond the river Flory could see the
group of Burmans embarking. They were lifting a long,
awkward-shaped bundle into the sampan. Mr Macgregor
had produced a letter from his file of papers.

‘Perhaps I had better explain how this question arose in
the first place. The Commissioner tells me that a circular
has been sent round by the Government, suggesting that
in those Clubs where there are no native members, one at
least shall be co-opted; that is, admitted automatically. The
circular says—ah yes! here it is: “It is mistaken policy to
offer social affronts to native officials of high standing”. I
may say that I disagree most emphatically. No doubt we
all do. We who have to do the actual work of government
see things very differently from these—ah—Paget MPs
who interfere with us from above. The Commissioner
quite agrees with me. However——’

‘But it’s all bloody rot!’ broke in Ellis. ‘What’s it got to
do with the Commissioner or anyone else? Surely we can
do as we like in our own bloody Club? They’ve no right
to dictate to us when we’re off duty.’

‘Quite,’ said Westfield.

‘You anticipate me. I told the Commissioner that I
should have to put the matter before the other members.
And the course he suggests is this. If the idea finds any
support in the Club, he thinks it would be better if we co-opted
our native member. On the other hand, if the entire
Club is against it, it can be dropped. That is, if opinion is
quite unanimous.’

‘Well, it damned well is unanimous,’ said Ellis.

‘D’you mean,’ said Westfield, ‘that it depends on ourselves
whether we have ’em in here or no?’

‘I fancy we can take it as meaning that.’

‘Well, then, let’s say we’re against it to a man.’

‘And say it bloody firmly, by God. We want to put our
foot down on this idea once and for all.’

‘Hear, hear!’ said Mr Lackersteen gruffly. ‘Keep the
black swabs out of it. Esprit de corps and all that.’

Mr Lackersteen could always be relied upon for sound
sentiments in a case like this. In his heart he did not care
and never had cared a damn for the British Raj, and he was
as happy drinking with an Oriental as with a white man;
but he was always ready with a loud ‘Hear, hear!’ when
anyone suggested the bamboo for disrespectful servants or
boiling oil for Nationalists. He prided himself that though
he might booze a bit and all that, dammit, he was loyal.
It was his form of respectability. Mr Macgregor was
secretly rather relieved by the general agreement. If any
Oriental member were co-opted, that member would
have to be Dr Veraswami, and he had had the deepest
distrust of the doctor ever since Nga Shwe O’s suspicious
escape from the jail.

‘Then I take it that you are all agreed?’ he said. ‘If so,
I will inform the Commissioner. Otherwise, we must begin
discussing the candidate for election.’

Flory stood up. He had got to say his say. His heart
seemed to have risen into his throat and to be choking him.
From what Mr Macgregor had said, it was clear that it was
in his power to secure the doctor’s election by speaking the
word. But oh, what a bore, what a nuisance it was! What
an infernal uproar there would be! How he wished he had
never given the doctor that promise! No matter, he had
given it, and he could not break it. So short a time ago he
would have broken it, en bon pukka sahib, how easily! But
not now. He had got to see this thing through. He turned
himself sidelong so that his birthmark was away from the
others. Already he could feel his voice going flat and guilty.

‘Our friend Flory has something to suggest?’

‘Yes. I propose Dr Veraswami as a member of this
Club.’

There was such a yell of dismay from three of the others
that Mr Macgregor had to rap sharply on the table and
remind them that the ladies were in the next room. Ellis
took not the smallest notice. He had sprung to his feet
again, and the skin round his nose had gone quite grey. He
and Flory remained facing one another, as though on the
point of blows.

‘But look at him, look at him!’ cried Ellis almost tearfully.
‘Letting us all down for the sake of a pot-bellied
nigger! After all we’ve said to him! When we’ve only got
to hang together and we can keep the stink of garlic out
of this Club for ever. My God, wouldn’t it make you spew
your guts up to see anyone behaving like such a ——?’

‘Take it back, Flory, old man!’ said Westfield. ‘Don’t be
a bloody fool!’

‘Downright Bolshevism, dammit!’ said Mr Lackersteen.

‘Do you think I care what you say? What business is it
of yours? It’s for Macgregor to decide.’

‘Then do you—ah—adhere to your decision?’ said Mr
Macgregor gloomily.

‘Yes.’

Mr Macgregor sighed. ‘A pity! Well, in that case I
suppose I have no choice—’

‘No, no, no!’ cried Ellis, dancing about in his rage.
‘Don’t give in to him! Put it to the vote. And if that son
of a bitch doesn’t put in a black ball like the rest of us, we’ll
first turf him out of the Club himself, and then—well!
Butler!’

‘Sahib!’ said the butler, appearing.

‘Bring the ballot box and the balls. Now clear out!’ he
added roughly when the butler had obeyed.

The air had gone very stagnant; for some reason the
punkah had stopped working. Mr Macgregor stood up
with a disapproving but judicial mien, taking the two
drawers of black and white balls out of the ballot box.

‘We must proceed in order. Mr Flory proposes Dr
Veraswami, the Civil Surgeon, as a member of this Club.
Mistaken, in my opinion, greatly mistaken; however—!
Before putting the matter to the vote—’

‘Oh, why make a song and dance about it?’ said Ellis.
‘Here’s my contribution! And another for Maxwell.’ He
plumped two black balls into the box. Then one of his
sudden spasms of rage seized him, and he took the drawer
of white balls and pitched them across the floor. They went
flying in all directions. ‘There! Now pick one up if you
want to use it!’

‘You damned fool! What good do you think that does?’

‘Sahib!’

They all started and looked around. The chokra was
goggling at them over the veranda rail, having climbed up
from below. With one skinny arm he clung to the rail and
with the other gesticulated towards the river.

‘Sahib! Sahib!’

‘What’s up?’ said Westfield.

They all moved for the window. The sampan that Flory
had seen across the river was lying under the bank at the
foot of the lawn, one of the men clinging to a bush to steady
it. The Burman in the green gaungbaung was climbing out.

‘That’s one of Maxwell’s Forest Rangers!’ said Ellis in
quite a different voice. ‘By God! something’s happened!’

The Forest Ranger saw Mr Macgregor, shikoed in a
hurried, preoccupied way and turned back to the sampan.
Four other men, peasants, climbed out after him, and with
difficulty lifted ashore the strange bundle that Flory had
seen in the distance. It was six feet long, swathed in cloths,
like a mummy. Something happened in everybody’s
entrails. The Forest Ranger glanced at the veranda, saw
that there was no way up, and led the peasants round the
path to the front of the Club. They had hoisted the bundle
onto their shoulders as funeral bearers hoist a coffin. The
butler had flitted into the lounge again, and even his face
was pale after its fashion—that is, grey.

‘Butler!’ said Mr Macgregor sharply.

‘Sir!’

‘Go quickly and shut the door of the card-room. Keep
it shut. Don’t let the memsahibs see.’

‘Yes, sir!’

The Burmans, with their burden, came heavily down
the passage. As they entered the leading man staggered and
almost fell; he had trodden on one of the white balls that
were scattered about the floor. The Burmans knelt down,
lowered their burden to the floor and stood over it with
a strange reverent air, slightly bowing, their hands together
in a shiko. Westfield had fallen on his knees, and he pulled
back the cloth.

‘Christ! Just look at him!’ he said, but without much
surprise. ‘Just look at the poor little b——!’

Mr Lackersteen had retreated to the other end of the
room, with a bleating noise. From the moment when the
bundle was lifted ashore they had all known what it
contained. It was the body of Maxwell, cut almost to pieces
with dahs by two relatives of the man whom he had shot.

XXII

Maxwell’s death had caused a profound shock in Kyauktada.
It would cause a shock throughout the whole of
Burma, and the case—‘the Kyauktada case, do you remember?’—would
still be talked of years after the
wretched youth’s name was forgotten. But in a purely
personal way no one was much distressed. Maxwell had
been almost a nonentity—just a ‘good fellow’ like any
other of the ten thousand ex colore good fellows of Burma—and
with no close friends. No one among the Europeans
genuinely mourned for him. But that is not to say that they
were not angry. On the contrary, for the moment they
were almost mad with rage. For the unforgivable had
happened—a white man had been killed. When that happens,
a sort of shudder runs through the English of the East.
Eight hundred people, possibly, are murdered every year
in Burma; they matter nothing; but the murder of a white
man is a monstrosity, a sacrilege. Poor Maxwell would be
avenged, that was certain. But only a servant or two, and
the Forest Ranger who had brought in his body, and who
had been fond of him, shed any tears for his death.

On the other hand, no one was actually pleased, except
U Po Kyin.

‘This is a positive gift from heaven!’ he told Ma Kin. ‘I
could not have arranged it better myself. The one thing I
needed to make them take my rebellion seriously was a
little bloodshed. And here it is! I tell you Kin Kin, every
day I grow more certain that some higher power is working
on my behalf.’

‘Ko Po Kyin, truly you are without shame! I do not
know how you dare to say such things. Do you not
shudder to have murder upon your soul?’

‘What! I? Murder upon my soul? What are you talking
about? I have never killed so much as a chicken in my life.’

‘But you are profiting by this poor boy’s death.’

‘Profiting by it! Of course I am profiting by it! And why
not, indeed? Am I to blame if somebody else chooses to
commit murder? The fisherman catches fish, and he is
damned for it. But are we damned for eating the fish?
Certainly not. Why not eat the fish, once it is dead? You
should study the scriptures more carefully, my dear Kin
Kin.’

The funeral took place next morning, before breakfast.
All the Europeans were present, except Verrall, who was
careering about the maidan quite as usual, almost opposite
the cemetery. Mr Macgregor read the burial service. The
little group of Englishmen stood round the grave, their
topis in their hands, sweating into the dark suits that they
had dug out from the bottoms of their boxes. The harsh
morning light beat without mercy upon their faces,
yellower than ever against the ugly, shabby clothes. Every
face except Elizabeth’s looked lined and old. Dr Veraswami
and half a dozen other Orientals were present, but
they kept themselves decently in the background. There
were sixteen gravestones in the little cemetery; assistants
of timber firms, officials, soldiers killed in forgotten
skirmishes.

‘Sacred to the memory of John Henry Spagnall, late of
the Indian Imperial Police, who was cut down by cholera
while in the unremitting exercise of’ etc. etc. etc.

Flory remembered Spagnall dimly. He had died very
suddenly in camp after his second go of delirium tremens.
In a corner there were some graves of Eurasians, with
wooden crosses. The creeping jasmine, with tiny orange-hearted
flowers, had overgrown everything. Among the
jasmine, large rat-holes led down into the graves.

Mr Macgregor concluded the burial service in a ripe,
reverent voice, and led the way out of the cemetery, holding
his grey topi—the eastern equivalent of a top hat—against
his stomach. Flory lingered by the gate, hoping that
Elizabeth would speak to him, but she passed him without
a glance. Everyone had shunned him this morning. He was
in disgrace; the murder had made his disloyalty of last night
seem somehow horrible. Ellis had caught Westfield by
the arm, and they halted at the grave-side, taking out their
cigarette-cases. Flory could hear their slangy voices coming
across the open grave.

‘My God, Westfield, my God, when I think of that poor
little b—— lying down there—oh, my God, how my
blood does boil! I couldn’t sleep all night, I was so furious.’

‘Pretty bloody, I grant. Never mind, promise you a
couple of chaps shall swing for it. Two corpses against
their one—best we can do.’

‘Two! It ought to be fifty! We’ve got to raise heaven and
hell to get these fellows hanged. Have you got their names
yet?’

‘Yes, rather!! Whole blooming district knows who did
it. We always do know who’s done it in these cases. Getting
the bloody villagers to talk—that’s the only trouble.’

‘Well, for God’s sake get them to talk this time. Never
mind the bloody law. Whack it out of them. Torture
them—anything. If you want to bribe any witnesses I’m
good for a couple of hundred chips.’

Westfield sighed. ‘Can’t do that sort of thing, I’m afraid.
Wish we could. My chaps’d know how to put the screw
on a witness if you gave ’em the word. Tie ’em down on
an ant-hill. Red peppers. But that won’t do nowadays. Got
to keep our own bloody silly laws. But never mind, those
fellows’ll swing all right. We’ve got all the evidence we
want.’

‘Good! And when you’ve arrested them, if you aren’t
sure of getting a conviction, shoot them, jolly well shoot
them! Fake up an escape or something. Anything sooner
than let those b——s go free.’

‘That’s the stuff! I’ll never sleep easy again till I’ve seen
them swinging,’ said Ellis as they moved away from the
grave. ‘Christ! Let’s get out of this sun! I’m about perishing
with thirst.’

Everyone was perishing, more or less, but it seemed
hardly decent to go down to the Club for drinks immediately
after the funeral. The Europeans scattered for their
houses, while four sweepers with mamooties flung the grey,
cement-like earth back into the grave, and shaped it into
a rough mound.

After breakfast, Ellis was walking down to his office,
cane in hand. It was blinding hot. Ellis had bathed and
changed back into shirt and shorts, but wearing a thick suit
even for an hour had brought on his prickly heat abominably.
Westfield had gone out already, in his motor launch,
with an Inspector and half a dozen men, to arrest the
murderers. He had ordered Verrall to accompany him—not
that Verrall was needed, but, as Westfield said, it would
do the young swab good to have a spot of work.

Ellis wriggled his shoulders—his prickly heat was almost
beyond bearing. The rage was stewing in his body like a
bitter juice. He had brooded all night over what had
happened. They had killed a white man, killed a white man,
the bloody sods, the sneaking cowardly hounds! Oh, the
swine, the swine, how they ought to be made to suffer for
it! Why did we make these cursed kid-glove laws? Why
did we take everything lying down? Just suppose this had
happened in a German colony, before the War! The good
old Germans! They knew how to treat the niggers.
Reprisals! Rhinoceros hide whips! Raid their villages, kill
their cattle, burn their crops, decimate them, blow them
from the guns.

Ellis gazed into the horrible cascades of light that poured
through the gaps in the trees. His greenish eyes were large
and mournful. A mild, middle-aged Burman came by,
balancing a huge bamboo, which he shifted from one
shoulder to the other with a grunt as he passed Ellis. Ellis’s
grip tightened on his stick. If that swine, now, would only
attack you! Or even insult you—anything, so that you had
the right to smash him! If only these gutless curs would ever
show fight in any conceivable way! Instead of just sneaking
past you, keeping within the law so that you never had a
chance to get back on them. Ah, for a real rebellion—martial
law proclaimed and no quarter given! Lovely,
sanguinary images moved through his mind. Shrieking
mounds of natives, soldiers slaughtering them. Shoot
them, ride them down, horses’ hooves trample their guts
out, whips cut their faces in slices!

Five High School boys came down the road abreast.
Ellis saw them coming, a row of yellow, malicious faces—epicene
faces, horribly smooth and young, grinning at him
with deliberate insolence. It was in their minds to bait him,
as a white man. Probably they had heard of the murder,
and—being Nationalists, like all schoolboys—regarded it
as a victory. They grinned full in Ellis’s face as they passed
him. They were trying openly to provoke him, and they
knew that the law was on their side. Ellis felt his breast
swell. The look of their faces, jeering at him like a row of
yellow images, was maddening. He stopped short.

‘Here! What are you laughing at, you young ticks?’

The boys turned.

‘I said what the bloody hell are you laughing at?’

One of the boys answered, insolently—but perhaps his
bad English made him seem more insolent than he
intended:

‘Not your business.’

There was about a second during which Ellis did not
know what he was doing. In that second he had hit out
with all his strength, and the cane landed, crack! right across
the boy’s eyes. The boy recoiled with a shriek, and in the
same instant the other four had thrown themselves upon
Ellis. But he was too strong for them. He flung them aside
and sprang back, lashing out with his stick so furiously that
none of them dared come near.

‘Keep your distance, you ——s! Keep off, or by God
I’ll smash another of you!’

Though they were four to one he was so formidable that
they surged back in fright. The boy who was hurt had
fallen on his knees with his arms across his face, and was
screaming ‘I am blinded! I am blinded!’ Suddenly the other
four turned and darted for a pile of laterite, used for road-mending,
which was twenty yards away. One of Ellis’s
clerks had appeared on the veranda of the office and was
leaping up and down in agitation.

‘Come up, sir, come up at once! They will murder
you!’

Ellis disdained to run, but he moved for the veranda
steps. A lump of laterite came sailing through the air and
shattered itself against a pillar, whereat the clerk scooted
indoors. But Ellis turned on the veranda to face the boys,
who were below, each carrying an armful of laterite. He
was cackling with delight.

‘You damned, dirty little niggers!’ he shouted down at
them. ‘You got a surprise that time, didn’t you? Come up
on this veranda and fight me, all four of you! You daren’t.
Four to one and you daren’t face me! Do you call yourselves
men? You sneaking, mangy little rats!’

He broke into Burmese, calling them the incestuous
children of pigs. All the while they were pelting him with
lumps of laterite, but their arms were feeble and they threw
ineptly. He dodged the stones, and as each one missed him
he cackled in triumph. Presently there was a sound of
shouts up the road, for the noise had been heard at the
police station, and some constables were emerging to see
what was the matter. The boys took fright and bolted,
leaving Ellis a complete victor.

Ellis had heartily enjoyed the affray, but he was furiously
angry as soon as it was over. He wrote a violent note to
Mr Macgregor, telling him that he had been wantonly
assaulted and demanding vengeance. Two clerks who had
witnessed the scene, and a chaprassi, were sent along to Mr
Macgregor’s office to corroborate the story. They lied in
perfect unison. ‘The boys had attacked Mr Ellis without
any provocation whatever, he had defended himself,’ etc.
etc. Ellis, to do him justice, probably believed this to be a
truthful version of the story. Mr Macgregor was somewhat
disturbed, and ordered the police to find the four
schoolboys and interrogate them. The boys, however, had
been expecting something of the kind, and were lying very
low; the police searched the bazaar all day without finding
them. In the evening the wounded boy was taken to a
Burmese doctor, who, by applying some poisonous concoction
of crushed leaves to his left eye, succeeded in
blinding him.

The Europeans met at the Club as usual that evening,
except for Westfield and Verrall, who had not yet returned.
Everyone was in a bad mood. Coming on top of
the murder, the unprovoked attack on Ellis (for that was
the accepted description of it) had scared them as well
as angered them. Mrs Lackersteen was twittering to the
tune of ‘We shall all be murdered in our beds’. Mr Macgregor,
to reassure her, told her that in cases of riot the
European ladies were always locked inside the jail until
everything was over; but she did not seem much comforted.
Ellis was offensive to Flory, and Elizabeth cut
him almost dead. He had come down to the Club in
the insane hope of making up their quarrel, and her
demeanour made him so miserable that for the greater part
of the evening he skulked in the library. It was not till eight
o’clock, when everyone had swallowed a number of
drinks, that the atmosphere grew a little more friendly, and
Ellis said:

‘What about sending a couple of chokras up to our houses
and getting our dinners sent down here? We might as well
have a few rubbers of bridge. Better than mooning about
at home.’

Mrs Lackersteen, who was in dread of going home,
jumped at the suggestion. The Europeans occasionally
dined at the Club when they wanted to stay late. Two of
the chokras were sent for, and on being told what was
wanted of them, immediately burst into tears. It appeared
that if they went up the hill they were certain of encountering
Maxwell’s ghost. The mali was sent instead. As the man
set out Flory noticed that it was again the night of the full
moon—four weeks to a day since that evening, now
unutterably remote, when he had kissed Elizabeth under
the frangipani tree.

They had just sat down at the bridge table, and Mrs
Lackersteen had just revoked out of pure nervousness,
when there was a heavy thump on the roof. Everyone
started and looked up.

‘A coco-nut falling!’ said Mr Macgregor.

‘There aren’t any coco-nut trees here,’ said Ellis.

The next moment a number of things happened all
together. There was another and much louder bang, one
of the petrol lamps broke from its hook and crashed to the
ground, narrowly missing Mr Lackersteen, who jumped
aside with a yelp, Mrs Lackersteen began screaming, and
the butler rushed into the room, bareheaded, his face the
colour of bad coffee.

‘Sir, sir! Bad men come! Going to murder us all, sir!’

‘What? Bad men? What do you mean?’

‘Sir, all the villagers are outside! Big stick and dah in their
hands, and all dancing about! Going to cut master’s throat,
sir!’

Mrs Lackersteen threw herself backwards in her chair.
She was setting up such a din of screams as to drown the
butler’s voice.

‘Oh, be quiet!’ said Ellis sharply, turning on her. ‘Listen,
all of you! Listen to that!’

There was a deep, murmurous, dangerous sound outside,
like the humming of an angry giant. Mr Macgregor,
who had stood up, stiffened as he heard it, and settled his
spectacles pugnaciously on his nose.

‘This is some kind of disturbance! Butler, pick that lamp
up. Miss Lackersteen, look to your aunt. See if she is hurt.
The rest of you come with me!’

They all made for the front door, which someone,
presumably the butler, had closed. A fusillade of small
pebbles was rattling against it like hail. Mr Lackersteen
wavered at the sound and retreated behind the others.

He opened the door and presented himself boldly at the
top of the steps. There were about twenty Burmans on the
path, with dahs or sticks in their hands. Outside the fence,
stretching up the road in either direction and far out on to
the maidan, was an enormous crowd of people. It was like
a sea of people, two thousand at the least, black and white
in the moon, with here and there a curved dah glittering.
Ellis had coolly placed himself beside Mr Macgregor, with
his hands in his pockets. Mr Lackersteen had disappeared.

Mr Macgregor raised his hand for silence. ‘What is the
meaning of this?’ he shouted sternly.

There were yells, and some lumps of laterite the size of
cricket balls came sailing from the road, but fortunately hit
no one. One of the men on the path turned and waved his
arms to the others, shouting that they were not to begin
throwing yet. Then he stepped forward to address the
Europeans. He was a strong debonair fellow of about
thirty, with down-curving moustaches, wearing a singlet,
with his longyi kilted to the knee.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ Mr Macgregor repeated.

The man spoke up with a cheerful grin, and not very
insolently.

‘We have no quarrel with you, min gyi. We have come
for the timber merchant, Ellis.’ (He pronounced it Ellit).
‘The boy whom he struck this morning has gone blind.
You must send Ellit out to us here, so that we can punish
him. The rest of you will not be hurt.’

‘Just remember that fellow’s face,’ said Ellis over his
shoulder to Flory. ‘We’ll get him seven years for this
afterwards.’

Mr Macgregor had turned temporarily quite purple. His
rage was so great that it almost choked him. For several
moments he could not speak, and when he did so it was
in English.

‘Whom do you think you are speaking to? In twenty
years I have never heard such insolence! Go away this
instant, or I shall call out the Military Police!’

‘You had better be quick, min gyi. We know that there
is no justice for us in your courts, so we must punish Ellit
ourselves. Send him out to us here. Otherwise, all of you
will weep for it.’

Mr Macgregor made a furious motion with his fist, as
though hammering in a nail. ‘Go away, son of a dog!’ he
cried, using his first oath in many years.

There was a thunderous roar from the road, and such
a shower of stones that everyone was hit, including the
Burmans on the path. One stone took Mr Macgregor full
in the face, almost knocking him down. The Europeans
bolted hastily inside and barred the door. Mr Macgregor’s
spectacles were smashed and his nose streaming blood.
They got back to the lounge to find Mrs Lackersteen
looping about in one of the long chairs like a hysterical
snake, Mr Lackersteen standing irresolutely in the middle
of the room, holding an empty bottle, the butler on his
knees in the corner, crossing himself (he was a Roman
Catholic), the chokras crying, and only Elizabeth calm,
though she was very pale.

‘What’s happened?’ she exclaimed.

‘We’re in the soup, that’s what’s happened!’ said Ellis
angrily, feeling at the back of his neck where a stone had
hit him. ‘The Burmans are all round, shying rocks. But
keep calm! They haven’t the guts to break the doors in.’

‘Call out the police at once!’ said Mr Macgregor
indistinctly, for he was stanching his nose with his handkerchief.

‘Can’t!’ said Ellis. ‘I was looking round while you were
talking to them. They’ve cut us off, rot their damned souls!
No one could possibly get to the police lines. Veraswami’s
compound is full of men.’

‘Then we must wait. We can trust them to turn out of
their own accord. Calm yourself, my dear Mrs Lackersteen,
please calm yourself! The danger is very small.’

It did not sound small. There were no gaps in the noise
now, and the Burmans seemed to be pouring into the
compound by hundreds. The din swelled suddenly to such
a volume that no one could make himself heard except by
shouting. All the windows in the lounge had been shut, and
some perforated zinc shutters within, which were sometimes
used for keeping out insects, pulled to and bolted.
There was a series of crashes as the windows were broken,
and then a ceaseless thudding of stones from all sides, that
shook the thin wooden walls and seemed likely to split
them. Ellis opened a shutter and flung a bottle viciously
among the crowd, but a dozen stones came hurtling in and
he had to close the shutter hurriedly. The Burmans seemed
to have no plan beyond flinging stones, yelling and
hammering at the walls, but the mere volume of noise was
unnerving. The Europeans were half dazed by it at first.
None of them thought to blame Ellis, the sole cause of this
affair; their common peril seemed, indeed, to draw them
closer together for the while. Mr Macgregor, half blind
without his spectacles, stood distractedly in the middle of
the room, yielding his right hand to Mrs Lackersteen, who
was caressing it, while a weeping chokra clung to his left
leg. Mr Lackersteen had vanished again. Ellis was stamping
furiously up and down, shaking his fist in the direction of
the police lines.

‘Where are the police, the f—— cowardly sods?’ he
yelled, heedless of the women. ‘Why don’t they turn out?
My God, we won’t get another chance like this in a
hundred years! If we’d only ten rifles here, how we could
slosh these b——s!’

‘They’ll be here presently!’ Mr Macgregor shouted
back. ‘It will take them some minutes to penetrate that
crowd.’

‘But why don’t they use their rifles, the miserable sons
of bitches? They could slaughter them in bloody heaps if
they’d only open fire. Oh God, to think of missing a chance
like this!’

A lump of rock burst one of the zinc shutters. Another
followed through the hole it had made, stove in a ‘Bonzo’
picture, bounced off, cut Elizabeth’s elbow, and finally
landed on the table. There was a roar of triumph from
outside, and then a succession of tremendous thumps on the
roof. Some children had climbed into the trees and were
having the time of their lives sliding down the roof on their
bottoms. Mrs Lackersteen outdid all previous efforts with
a shriek that rose easily above the din outside.

‘Choke that bloody hag, somebody!’ cried Ellis.
‘Anyone’d think a pig was being killed. We’ve got to do
something. Flory, Macgregor, come here! Think of a way
out of this mess, someone!’

Elizabeth had suddenly lost her nerve and begun crying.
The blow from the stone had hurt her. To Flory’s astonishment,
he found her clinging tightly to his arm. Even in that
moment it made his heart turn over. He had been watching
the scene almost with detachment—dazed by the noise,
indeed, but not much frightened. He always found it
difficult to believe that Orientals could be really dangerous.
Only when he felt Elizabeth’s hand on his arm did he grasp
the seriousness of the situation.

‘Oh, Mr Flory, please, please think of something! You
can, you can! Anything sooner than let those dreadful men
get in here!’

‘If only one of us could get to the police lines!’ groaned
Mr Macgregor. ‘A British officer to lead them! At the
worst I must try and go myself.’

‘Don’t be a fool! Only get your throat cut!’ yelled Ellis.
‘I’ll go if they really look like breaking in. But, oh, to be
killed by swine like that! How furious it’d make me! And
to think we could murder the whole bloody crowd if only
we could get the police here!’

‘Couldn’t someone get along the river bank?’ Flory
shouted despairingly.

‘Hopeless! Hundreds of them prowling up and down.
We’re cut off—Burmans on three sides and the river on
the other!’

‘The river!’

One of those startling ideas that are overlooked simply
because they are so obvious had sprung into Flory’s mind.

‘The river! Of course! We can get to the police lines as
easy as winking. Don’t you see?’

‘How?’

‘Why, down the river—in the water! Swim!’

‘Oh, good man!’ cried Ellis, and smacked Flory on the
shoulder. Elizabeth squeezed his arm and actually danced
a step or two in glee. ‘I’ll go if you like!’ Ellis shouted, but
Flory shook his head. He had already begun slipping his
shoes off. There was obviously no time to be lost. The
Burmans had behaved like fools hitherto, but there was no
saying what might happen if they succeeded in breaking
in. The butler, who had got over his first fright, prepared
to open the window that gave on the lawn, and glanced
obliquely out. There were barely a score of Burmans on
the lawn. They had left the back of the Club unguarded,
supposing that the river cut off retreat.

‘Rush down the lawn like hell!’ Ellis shouted in Flory’s
ear. ‘They’ll scatter all right when they see you.’

‘Order the police to open fire at once!’ shouted Mr
Macgregor from the other side. ‘You have my authority.’

‘And tell them to aim low! No firing over their heads.
Shoot to kill. In the guts for choice.’

Flory leapt down from the veranda, hurting his feet on
the hard earth, and was at the river bank in six paces. As
Ellis had said, the Burmans recoiled for a moment when
they saw him leaping down. A few stones followed him,
but no one pursued—they thought, no doubt, that he was
only attempting to escape, and in the clear moonlight they
could see that it was not Ellis. In another moment he had
pushed his way through the bushes and was in the water.

He sank deep down, and the horrible river ooze received
him, sucking him knee-deep so that it was several seconds
before he could free himself. When he came to the surface
a tepid froth, like the froth on stout, was lapping round his
lips, and some spongy thing had floated into his throat and
was choking him. It was a sprig of water hyacinth. He
managed to spit it out, and found that the swift current had
floated him twenty yards already. Burmans were rushing
rather aimlessly up and down the bank, yelling. With his
eye at the level of the water, Flory could not see the crowd
besieging the Club; but he could hear their deep, devilish
roaring, which sounded even louder than it had sounded
on shore. By the time he was opposite the Military Police
lines the bank seemed almost bare of men. He managed to
struggle out of the current and flounder through the mud,
which sucked off his left sock. A little way down the bank
two old men were sitting beside a fire, sharpening fence-posts,
as though there had not been a riot within a hundred
miles of them. Flory crawled ashore, clambered over the
fence and ran heavily across the moon-white parade-ground,
his wet trousers sagging. As far as he could tell in
the noise, the lines were quite empty. In some stalls over
to the right Verrall’s horses were plunging about in a panic.
Flory ran out on to the road, and saw what had happened.

The whole body of policemen, military and civil, about
a hundred and fifty men in all, had attacked the crowd
from the rear, armed only with sticks. They had been
utterly engulfed. The crowd was so dense that it was like
an enormous swarm of bees seething and rotating. Everywhere
one could see policemen wedged helplessly among
the hordes of Burmans, struggling furiously but uselessly,
and too cramped even to use their sticks. Whole knots of
men were tangled Laocoön-like in the folds of unrolled
pagris. There was a terrific bellowing of oaths in three or
four languages, clouds of dust, and a suffocating stench of
sweat and marigolds—but no one seemed to have been
seriously hurt. Probably the Burmans had not used their
dahs for fear of provoking rifle-fire. Flory pushed his way
into the crowd and was immediately swallowed up like the
others. A sea of bodies closed in upon him and flung him
from side to side, bumping his ribs and choking him with
their animal heat. He struggled onwards with an almost
dreamlike feeling, so absurd and unreal was the situation.
The whole riot had been ludicrous from the start, and what
was most ludicrous of all was that the Burmans, who might
have killed him, did not know what to do with him now
that he was among them. Some yelled insults in his face,
some jolted him and stamped on his feet, some even tried
to make way for him, as a white man. He was not certain
whether he was fighting for his life, or merely pushing his
way through the crowd. For quite a long time he was
jammed, helpless, with his arms pinned against his sides,
then he found himself wrestling with a stumpy Burman
much stronger than himself, then a dozen men rolled
against him like a wave and drove him deeper into the
heart of the crowd. Suddenly he felt an agonising pain in
his right big toe—someone in boots had trodden on it. It
was the Military Police subahdar, a Rajput, very fat, moustachioed,
with his pagri gone. He was grasping a Burman
by the throat and trying to hammer his face, while the
sweat rolled off his bare, bald crown. Flory threw his arm
round the subahdar’s neck and managed to tear him away
from his adversary and shout in his ear. His Urdu deserted
him, and he bellowed in Burmese:

‘Why did you not open fire?’

For a long time he could not hear the man’s answer.
Then he caught it:

‘Hukm ne aya’—‘I have had no orders!’

‘Idiot!’

At this moment another bunch of men drove against
them, and for a minute or two they were pinned and quite
unable to move. Flory realised that the subahdar had a
whistle in his pocket and was trying to get at it. Finally he
got it loose and blew a dozen piercing blasts, but there was
no hope of rallying any men until they could get into a
clear space. It was a fearful labour to struggle out of the
crowd—it was like wading neck-deep through a viscous
sea. At times the exhaustion of Flory’s limbs was so complete
that he stood passive, letting the crowd hold him and
even drive him backwards. At last, more from the natural
eddying of the crowd than by his own effort, he found
himself flung out into the open. The subahdar had also
emerged, ten or fifteen sepoys, and a Burmese Inspector of
Police. Most of the sepoys collapsed on their haunches,
almost falling with fatigue, and limping, their feet having
been trampled on.

‘Come on, get up! Run like hell for the lines! Get some
rifles and a clip of ammunition each.’

He was too overcome even to speak in Burmese, but the
men understood him and lolloped heavily towards the
police lines. Flory followed them, to get away from the
crowd before they turned on him again. When he reached
the gate the sepoys were returning with their rifles and
already preparing to fire.

‘Then tell them to fire high, right over the people’s
heads. And above all, to fire all together. Make them
understand that.’

The fat Inspector, whose Hindustani was even worse
than Flory’s, explained what was wanted, chiefly by leaping
up and down and gesticulating. The sepoys raised their
rifles, there was a roar, and a rolling echo from the hillside.
For a moment Flory thought that his order had been
disregarded, for almost the entire section of the crowd
nearest them had fallen like a swath of hay. However, they
had only flung themselves down in panic. The sepoys fired
a second volley, but it was not needed. The crowd had
immediately begun to surge outwards from the Club like
a river changing its course. They came pouring down the
road, saw the armed men barring their way, and tried to
recoil, whereupon there was a fresh battle between those
in front and those behind; finally the whole crowd bulged
outwards and began to roll slowly up the maidan. Flory
and the sepoys moved slowly towards the Club on the
heels of the retreating crowd. The policemen who had
been engulfed were straggling back by ones and twos.
Their pagris were gone and their puttees trailing yards
behind them, but they had no damage worse than bruises.
The Civil Policemen were dragging a very few prisoners
among them. When they reached the Club compound the
Burmans were still pouring out, an endless line of young
men leaping gracefully through a gap in the hedge like a
procession of gazelles. It seemed to Flory that it was getting
very dark. A small white-clad figure extricated itself from
the last of the crowd and tumbled limply into Flory’s arms.
It was Dr Veraswami, with his tie torn off but his spectacles
miraculously unbroken.

‘Doctor!’

‘Ach, my friend! Ach, how I am exhausted!’

‘What are you doing here? Were you right in the middle
of that crowd?’

‘I wass trying to restrain them, my friend. It wass hopeless
until you came. But there iss at least one man who bears
the mark of this, I think!’

He held out a small fist for Flory to see the damaged
knuckles. But it was certainly quite dark now. At the same
moment Flory heard a nasal voice behind him.

‘Well, Mr Flory, so it is all over already! A mere flash
in the pan as usual. You and I together were a little too
much for them—ha, ha!’

It was U Po Kyin. He came towards them with a martial
air, carrying a huge stick, and with a revolver thrust into
his belt. His dress was a studious négligé—singlet and Shan
trousers—to give the impression that he had rushed out of
his house post-haste. He had been lying low until the
danger should be over, and was now hurrying forth to
grab a share of any credit that might be going.

‘A smart piece of work, sir!’ he said enthusiastically.
‘Look how they are flying up the hillside! We have routed
them most satisfactorily.’

‘We!’ panted the doctor indignantly.

‘Ah, my dear doctor! I did not perceive that you were
there. Is it possible that you also have been in the fighting?
You—risking your most valuable life! Who would have
believed such a thing?’

‘You’ve taken your time getting here yourself!’ said
Flory angrily.

‘Well, well, sir, it is enough that we have dispersed them.
Although,’ he added with a touch of satisfaction, for he had
noticed Flory’s tone, ‘they are going in the direction of the
European houses, you will observe. I fancy that it will
occur to them to do a little plundering on their way.’

One had to admire the man’s impudence. He tucked his
great stick under his arm and strolled beside Flory in an
almost patronising manner, while the doctor dropped
behind, abashed in spite of himself. At the Club gate all
three men halted. It was now extraordinarily dark, and the
moon had vanished. Low overhead, just visible, black
clouds were streaming eastward like a pack of hounds.
A wind, almost cold, blew down the hillside and swept
a cloud of dust and fine water-vapour before it. There
was a sudden intensely rich scent of damp. The wind
quickened, the trees rustled, then began beating themselves
furiously together, the big frangipani tree by the tennis
court flinging out a nebula of dimly-seen blossom. All
three men turned and hurried for shelter, the Orientals to
their houses, Flory to the Club. It had begun raining.

XXIII

Next day the town was quieter than a cathedral city on
Monday morning. It is usually the case after a riot. Except
for the handful of prisoners, everyone who could possibly
have been concerned in the attack on the Club had a
watertight alibi. The Club garden looked as though a herd
of bison had stampeded across it, but the houses had not
been plundered, and there were no new casualties among
the Europeans, except that after everything was over Mr
Lackersteen had been found very drunk under the billiard-table,
where he had retired with a bottle of whisky. Westfield
and Verrall came back early in the morning, bringing
Maxwell’s murderers under arrest; or at any rate, bringing
two people who would presently be hanged for Maxwell’s
murder. Westfield, when he heard the news of the riot, was
gloomy but resigned. Again it had happened—a veritable
riot, and he not there to quell it! It seemed fated that he
should never kill a man. Depressing, depressing. Verrall’s
only comment was that it had been ‘damned lip’ on the
part of Flory (a civilian) to give orders to the Military
Police.

Meanwhile, it was raining almost without cease. As soon
as he woke up and heard the rain hammering on the roof
Flory dressed and hurried out, Flo following. Out of sight
of the houses he took off his clothes and let the rain sluice
down on his bare body. To his surprise, he found that he
was covered with bruises from last night; but the rain had
washed away every trace of his prickly heat within three
minutes. It is wonderful, the healing power of rain-water.
Flory walked down to Dr Veraswami’s house, with his
shoes squelching and periodical jets of water flowing down
his neck from the brim of his Terai hat. The sky was leaden,
and innumerable whirling storms chased one another
across the maidan like squadrons of cavalry. Burmans
passed, under vast wooden hats in spite of which their
bodies streamed water like the bronze gods in the fountains.
A network of rivulets was already washing the stones
of the road bare. The doctor had just got home when Flory
arrived, and was shaking a wet umbrella over the veranda
rail. He hailed Flory excitedly.

‘Come up, Mr Flory, come up at once! You are just
apropos. I wass on the point of opening a bottle of Old
Tommy Gin. Come up and let me drink to your health,
ass the saviour of Kyauktada!’

They had a long talk together. The doctor was in a
triumphant mood. It appeared that what had happened last
night had righted his troubles almost miraculously. U Po
Kyin’s schemes were undone. The doctor was no longer
at his mercy—in fact, it was the other way about. The
doctor explained to Flory:

‘You see, my friend, this riot—or rather, your most
noble behaviour in it—wass quite outside U Po Kyin’s
programme. He had started the so-called rebellion and had
the glory of crushing it, and he calculated that any further
outbreak would simply mean more glory still. I am told
that when he heard of Mr Maxwell’s death, hiss joy wass
positively’—the doctor nipped his thumb and forefinger
together—‘what iss the word I want?’

‘Obscene?’

‘Ah yes. Obscene. It iss said that actually he attempted
to dance—can you imagine such a disgusting spectacle?—and
exclaimed, “Now at least they will take my rebellion
seriously!” Such iss hiss regard for human life. But now hiss
triumph iss at an end. The riot hass tripped him up in mid-career.’

‘How?’

‘Because, do you not see, the honours of the riot are not
hiss, but yours! And I am known to be your friend. I stand,
so to speak, in the reflection of your glory. Are you not
the hero of the hour? Did not your European friends
receive you with open arms when you returned to the
Club last night?’

‘They did, I must admit. It was quite a new experience
for me. Mrs Lackersteen was all over me. “Dear Mr Flory”,
she calls me now. And she’s got her knife properly into
Ellis. She hasn’t forgotten that he called her a bloody hag
and told her to stop squealing like a pig.’

‘The only fly in the ointment is that I told the police to
fire over the crowd’s heads instead of straight at them. It
seems that’s against all the Government regulations. Ellis
was a little vexed about it. “Why didn’t you plug some of
the b——s when you had the chance?” he said. I pointed
out that it would have meant hitting the police who were
in the middle of the crowd; but as he said, they were only
niggers anyway. However, all my sins are forgiven me.
And Macgregor quoted something in Latin—Horace, I
believe.’

It was half an hour later when Flory walked along to
the Club. He had promised to see Mr Macgregor and settle
the business of the doctor’s election. But there would be
no difficulty about it now. The others would eat out of his
hand until the absurd riot was forgotten; he could have
gone into the Club and made a speech in favour of Lenin,
and they would have put up with it. The lovely rain
streamed down, drenching him from head to foot, and
filling his nostrils with the scent of earth, forgotten during
the bitter months of drought. He walked up the wrecked
garden, where the mali, bending down with the rain splashing
on his bare back, was trowelling holes for zinnias.
Nearly all the flowers had been trampled out of existence.
Elizabeth was there, on the side veranda, almost as though
she were waiting for him. He took off his hat, spilling
a pool of water from the brim, and went round to join
her.

‘Good morning!’ he said, raising his voice because of the
rain that beat noisily on the low roof.

‘Good morning! Isn’t it coming down? Simply pelting!’

‘Oh, this isn’t real rain. You wait till July. The whole
Bay of Bengal is going to pour itself on us, by instalments.’

It seemed that they must never meet without talking of
the weather. Nevertheless, her face said something very
different from the banal words. Her demeanour had
changed utterly since last night. He took courage.

‘How is the place where that stone hit you?’

She held her arm out to him and let him take it. Her
air was gentle, even submissive. He realised that his exploit
of last night had made him almost a hero in her eyes. She
could not know how small the danger had really been, and
she forgave him everything, even Ma Hla May, because
he had shown courage at the right moment. It was the
buffalo and the leopard over again. His heart thumped in
his breast. He slipped his hand down her arm and clasped
her fingers in his own.

‘Elizabeth——’

‘Someone will see us!’ she said, and she withdrew her
hand, but not angrily.

‘Elizabeth, I’ve something I want to say to you. Do you
remember a letter I wrote you from the jungle, after
our—some weeks ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘You remember what I said in it?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t answer it. Only——’

‘I couldn’t expect you to answer it, then. But I just
wanted to remind you of what I said.’

In the letter, of course, he had only said, and feebly
enough, that he loved her—would always love her, no
matter what happened. They were standing face to face,
very close together. On an impulse—and it was so swiftly
done that afterwards he had difficulty in believing that it
had ever happened—he took her in his arms and drew her
towards him. For a moment she yielded and let him lift
up her face and kiss her; then suddenly she recoiled and
shook her head. Perhaps she was frightened that someone
would see them, perhaps it was only because his moustache
was so wet from the rain. Without saying anything more
she broke from him and hurried away into the Club. There
was a look of distress or compunction in her face; but she
did not seem angry.

He followed her more slowly into the Club, and ran into
Mr Macgregor, who was in a very good humour. As soon
as he saw Flory he boomed genially, ‘Aha! The conquering
hero comes!’ and then, in a more serious vein, offered him
fresh congratulations. Flory improved the occasion by
saying a few words on behalf of the doctor. He painted
quite a lively picture of the doctor’s heroism in the riot. ‘He
was right in the middle of the crowd, fighting like a tiger,’
etc. etc. It was not too much exaggerated—for the doctor
had certainly risked his life. Mr Macgregor was impressed,
and so were the others when they heard of it. At all times
the testimony of one European can do an Oriental more
good than that of a thousand of his fellow countrymen; and
at this moment Flory’s opinion carried weight. Practically,
the doctor’s good name was restored. His election to the
Club could be taken as assured.

However, it was not finally agreed upon yet, because
Flory was returning to camp. He set out the same evening,
marching by night, and he did not see Elizabeth again
before leaving. It was quite safe to travel in the jungle now,
for the futile rebellion was obviously finished. There is
seldom any talk of rebellion after the rains have started—the
Burmans are too busy ploughing, and in any case the
waterlogged fields are impassable for large bodies of men.
Flory was to return to Kyauktada in ten days, when the
padre’s six-weekly visit fell due. The truth was that he did
not care to be in Kyauktada while both Elizabeth and
Verrall were there. And yet, it was strange, but all the
bitterness—all the obscene, crawling envy that had tormented
him before—was gone now that he knew she had
forgiven him. It was only Verrall who stood between them
now. And even the thought of her in Verrall’s arms could
hardly move him, because he knew that at the worst the
affair must have an end. Verrall, it was quite certain, would
never marry Elizabeth; young men of Verrall’s stamp do
not marry penniless girls met casually at obscure Indian
stations. He was only amusing himself with Elizabeth.
Presently he would desert her, and she would return to
him—to Flory. It was enough—it was far better than he
had hoped. There is a humility about genuine love that is
rather horrible in some ways.

U Po Kyin was furiously angry. The miserable riot had
taken him unawares, so far as anything ever took him
unawares, and it was like a handful of grit thrown into the
machinery of his plans. The business of disgracing the
doctor had got to be begun all over again. Begun it was,
sure enough, with such a spate of anonymous letters that
Hla Pe had to absent himself from office for two whole
days—it was bronchitis this time—to get them written.
The doctor was accused of every crime from pederasty to
stealing Government postage stamps. The prison warder
who had let Nga Shwe O escape had now come up for
trial. He was triumphantly acquitted, U Po Kyin having
spent as much as two hundred rupees in bribing the witnesses.
More letters showered upon Mr Macgregor,
proving in detail that Dr Veraswami, the real author of the
escape, had tried to shift the blame onto a helpless subordinate.
Nevertheless, the results were disappointing. The
confidential letter which Mr Macgregor wrote to the
Commissioner, reporting on the riot, was steamed open,
and its tone was so alarming—Mr Macgregor had spoken
of the doctor as ‘behaving most creditably’ on the night of
the riot—that U Po Kyin called a council of war.

‘The time has come for a vigorous move,’ he said to the
others—they were in conclave on the front veranda, before
breakfast. Ma Kin was there, and Ba Sein and Hla Pe—the
latter a bright-faced, promising boy of eighteen, with the
manner of one who will certainly succeed in life.

‘We are hammering against a brick wall,’ U Po Kyin
continued; ‘and that wall is Flory. Who could have foreseen
that that miserable coward would stand by his friend?
However, there it is. So long as Veraswami has his backing,
we are helpless.’

‘I have been talking to the Club butler, sir,’ said Ba Sein.
‘He tells me that Mr Ellis and Mr Westfield still do not
want the doctor to be elected to the Club. Do you not
think they will quarrel with Flory again as soon as this
business of the riot is forgotten?’

‘Of course they will quarrel, they always quarrel. But in
the meantime the harm is done. Just suppose that man were
elected! I believe I should die of rage if it happened. No,
there is only one move left. We must strike at Flory himself.’

‘At Flory, sir! But he is a white man!’

‘What do I care? I have ruined white men before now.
Once let Flory be disgraced, and there is an end of the
doctor. And he shall be disgraced! I will shame him so that
he will never dare show his face in that Club again!’

‘But, sir! A white man! What are we to accuse him of?
Who would believe anything against a white man?’

‘You have no strategy, Ko Ba Sein. One does not accuse
a white man; one has got to catch him in the act. Public
disgrace, in flagrante delicto. I shall know how to set about
it. Now be silent while I think.’

There was a pause. U Po Kyin stood gazing out into the
rain with his small hands clasped behind him and resting
on the natural plateau of his posterior. The other three
watched him from the end of the veranda, almost frightened
by this talk of attacking a white man, and waiting for
some masterstroke to cope with a situation that was
beyond them. It was a little like the familiar picture (is it
Meissonier’s?) of Napoleon at Moscow, poring over his
maps while his marshals wait in silence, with their cocked
hats in their hands. But of course U Po Kyin was more
equal to the situation than Napoleon. His plan was ready
within two minutes. When he turned round his vast face
was suffused with excessive joy. The doctor had been
mistaken when he described U Po Kyin as attempting to
dance; U Po Kyin’s figure was not designed for dancing;
but, had it been so designed, he would have danced at this
moment. He beckoned to Ba Sein and whispered in his ear
for a few seconds.

The plan was unfolded in detail. And when the others
had taken it in, all of them, even Ba Sein, who seldom
laughed, even Ma Kin, who disapproved from the bottom
of her soul, burst into irrepressible peals of laughter. The
plan was really too good to be resisted. It was genius.

All the while it was raining, raining. The day after Flory
went back to camp it rained for thirty-eight hours at a
stretch, sometimes slowing to the pace of English rain,
sometimes pouring down in such cataracts that one thought
the whole ocean must by now have been sucked up into
the clouds. The rattling on the roof became maddening
after a few hours. In the intervals between the rain the sun
glared as fiercely as ever, the mud began to crack and
steam, and patches of prickly heat sprang out all over one’s
body. Hordes of flying beetles had emerged from their
cocoons as soon as the rain started; there was a plague of
loathly creatures known as stink-bugs, which invaded the
houses in incredible numbers, littered themselves over the
dining-table and made one’s food uneatable. Verrall and
Elizabeth still went out riding in the evenings, when the rain
was not too fierce. To Verrall, all climates were alike, but
he did not like to see his ponies plastered with mud. Nearly
a week went by. Nothing was changed between them—they
were neither less nor more intimate than they had
been before. The proposal of marriage, still confidently
expected, was still unuttered. Then an alarming thing
happened. The news filtered to the Club, through Mr
Macgregor, that Verrall was leaving Kyauktada; the
Military Police were to be kept at Kyauktada, but another
officer was coming in Verrall’s place, no one was certain
when. Elizabeth was in horrible suspense. Surely, if he was
going away, he must say something definite soon? She
could not question him—dared not even ask him whether
he was really going; she could only wait for him to speak.
He said nothing. Then one evening, without warning, he
failed to turn up at the Club. And two whole days passed
during which Elizabeth did not see him at all.

It was dreadful, but there was nothing that could be
done. Verrall and Elizabeth had been inseparable for weeks,
and yet in a way they were almost strangers. He had kept
himself so aloof from them all—had never even seen the
inside of the Lackersteens’ house. They did not know him
well enough to seek him out at the dak bungalow, or write
to him; nor did he reappear at morning parade on the
maidan. There was nothing to do except wait until he
chose to present himself again. And when he did, would
he ask her to marry him? Surely, surely he must! Both
Elizabeth and her aunt (but neither of them had ever
spoken of it openly) held it as an article of faith that he must
ask her. Elizabeth looked forward to their next meeting
with a hope that was almost painful. Please God it would
be a week at least before he went! If she rode with him four
times more, or three times—even if it were only twice,
all might yet be well. Please God he would come back to
her soon! It was unthinkable that when he came, it would
only be to say good-bye! The two women went down to
the Club each evening and sat there until quite late at night,
listening for Verrall’s footsteps outside while seeming not
to listen; but he never appeared. Ellis, who understood the
situation perfectly, watched Elizabeth with spiteful amusement.
What made it worst of all was that Mr Lackersteen
was now pestering Elizabeth unceasingly. He had become
quite reckless. Almost under the eyes of the servants he
would waylay her, catch hold of her and begin pinching
and fondling her in the most revolting way. Her sole
defence was to threaten that she would tell her aunt;
happily he was too stupid to realise that she would never
dare do it.

On the third morning Elizabeth and her aunt arrived at
the Club just in time to escape a violent storm of rain. They
had been sitting in the lounge for a few minutes when they
heard the sound of someone stamping the water off his
shoes in the passage. Each woman’s heart stirred, for this
might be Verrall. Then a young man entered the lounge,
unbuttoning a long raincoat as he came. He was a stout,
rollicking, chuckle-headed youth of about twenty-five,
with fat fresh cheeks, butter-coloured hair, no forehead,
and, as it turned out afterwards, a deafening laugh.

Mrs Lackersteen made some inarticulate sound—it was
jerked out of her by her disappointment. The youth,
however, hailed them with immediate bonhomie, being
one of those who are on terms of slangy intimacy with
everyone from the moment of meeting them.

‘Hullo, hullo!’ he said. ‘Enter the fairy prince! Hope I
don’t sort of intrude and all that? Not shoving in on any
family gatherings or anything?’

‘Not at all!’ said Mrs Lackersteen in surprise.

‘What I mean to say—thought I’d just pop in at the Club
and have a glance round, don’t you know. Just to get
acclimatised to the local brand of whisky. I only got here
last night.’

‘Are you stationed here?’ said Mrs Lackersteen, mystified—for
they had not been expecting any newcomers.

‘Yes, rather. Pleasure’s mine, entirely.’

‘But we hadn’t heard. . . Oh, of course! I suppose you’re
from the Forest Department? In place of poor Mr Maxwell?’

‘What? Forest Department? No fear! I’m the new
Military Police bloke, you know.’

‘The—what?’

‘New Military Police bloke. Taking over from dear ole
Verrall. The dear ole chap’s got orders to go back to his
regiment. Going off in a fearful hurry. And a nice mess he’s
left everything in for yours truly, too.’

The Military Policeman was a crass youth, but even he
noticed that Elizabeth’s face turned suddenly sickly. She
found herself quite unable to speak. It was several seconds
before Mrs Lackersteen managed to exclaim.

‘Mr Verrall—going? Surely he isn’t going away yet?’

‘Going? He’s gone!’

‘Gone?’

‘Well, what I mean to say—train’s due to start in about
half an hour. He’ll be along at the station now. I sent a
fatigue party to look after him. Got to get his ponies aboard
and all that.’

There were probably further explanations, but neither
Elizabeth nor her aunt heard a word of them. In any case,
without even a good-bye to the Military Policeman, they
were out on the front steps within fifteen seconds. Mrs
Lackersteen called sharply for the butler.

‘Butler! Send my rickshaw round to the front at once!
To the station, jaldi!’ she added as the rickshaw-man appeared,
and, having settled herself in the rickshaw, poked
him in the back with the ferrule of her umbrella to start
him.

Elizabeth had put on her raincoat and Mrs Lackersteen
was cowering in the rickshaw behind her umbrella, but
neither was much use against the rain. It came driving
towards them in such sheets that Elizabeth’s frock was
soaked before they had reached the gate, and the rickshaw
almost overturned in the wind. The rickshaw-wallah put
his head down and struggled into it, groaning. Elizabeth
was in agony. It was a mistake, surely it was a mistake. He
had written to her and the letter had gone astray. That was
it, that must be it! It could not be that he had meant to leave
her without even saying good-bye! And if it were so—no,
not even then would she give up hope! When he saw her
on the platform, for the last time, he could not be so brutal
as to forsake her! As they neared the station she fell behind
the rickshaw and pinched her cheeks to bring the blood
into them. A squad of Military Police sepoys shuffled
hurriedly by, their thin uniforms sodden into rags, pushing
a handcart among them. Those would be Verrall’s fatigue
party. Thank God, there was a quarter of an hour yet. The
train was not due to leave for another quarter of an hour.
Thank God, at least, for this last chance of seeing him!

They arrived on the platform just in time to see the train
draw out of the station and gather speed with a series of
deafening snorts. The stationmaster, a little round, black
man, was standing on the line looking ruefully after the
train, and holding his waterproof-covered topi onto his
head with one hand, while with the other he fended off
two clamorous Indians who were bobbing at him and
trying to thrust something upon his attention. Mrs Lackersteen
leaned out of the rickshaw and called agitatedly
through the rain.

‘Stationmaster!’

‘Madam!’

‘What train is that?’

‘That is the Mandalay train, madam.’

‘The Mandalay train! It can’t be!’

‘But I assure you, madam! It is precisely the Mandalay
train.’ He came towards them, removing his topi.

‘But Mr Verrall—the Police officer? Surely he’s not on
it?’

‘Yes, madam, he have departed.’ He waved his hand
towards the train, now receding rapidly in a cloud of rain
and steam.

‘But the train wasn’t due to start yet!’

‘No, madam. Not due to start for another ten minutes.’

‘Then why has it gone?’

The stationmaster waved his topi apologetically from
side to side. His dark, squabby face looked quite distressed.

‘I know, madam, I know! Most unprecedented! But the
young Military Police officer have positively commanded
me to start the train! He declare that all is ready and he do
not wish to be kept waiting. I point out the irregularity.
He say he do not care about irregularity. I expostulate. He
insist. And in short——’

He made another gesture. It meant that Verrall was the
kind of man who would have his way, even when it came
to starting a train ten minutes early. There was a pause. The
two Indians, imagining that they saw their chance, suddenly
rushed forward, wailing, and offered some grubby
notebooks for Mrs Lackersteen’s inspection.

‘What do these men want?’ cried Mrs Lackersteen distractedly.

‘They are grass-wallahs, madam. They say that Lieutenant
Verrall have departed owing them large sums
of money. One for hay, the other for corn. Of mine it is no
affair.’

There was a hoot from the distant train. It rolled round
the bend, like a black-behinded caterpillar that looks over
its shoulder as it goes, and vanished. The stationmaster’s
wet white trousers flapped forlornly about his legs.
Whether Verrall had started the train early to escape Elizabeth,
or to escape the grass-wallahs, was an interesting
question that was never cleared up.

They made their way back along the road, and then
struggled up the hill in such a wind that sometimes they
were driven several paces backwards. When they gained
the veranda they were quite out of breath. The servants
took their streaming raincoats, and Elizabeth shook some
of the water from her hair. Mrs Lackersteen broke her
silence for the first time since they had left the station:

‘Well! Of all the unmannerly—of all the simply abominable
. . . !’

Elizabeth looked pale and sickly, in spite of the rain and
wind that had beaten into her face. But she would betray
nothing.

‘I think he might have waited to say good-bye to us,’
she said coldly.

‘Take my word for it, dear, you are thoroughly well rid
of him! . . . As I said from the start, a most odious young
man!’

Some time later, when they were sitting down to breakfast,
having bathed and got into dry clothes, and feeling
better, she remarked:

‘Let me see, what day is this?’

‘Saturday, aunt.’

‘Ah, Saturday. Then the dear padre will be arriving this
evening. How many shall we be for the service tomorrow?
Why, I think we shall all be here! How very nice! Mr Flory
will be here too. I think he said he was coming back from
the jungle tomorrow.’ She added almost lovingly, ‘Dear
Mr Flory!’

XXIV

It was nearly six o’clock in the evening, and the absurd
bell in the six-foot tin steeple of the church went clank-clank,
clank-clank! as old Mattu pulled the rope within.
The rays of the setting sun, refracted by distant rainstorms,
flooded the maidan with a beautiful, lurid light. It had been
raining earlier in the day, and would rain again. The
Christian community of Kyauktada, fifteen in number,
were gathering at the church door for the evening service.

Flory was there already, and Mr Macgregor, grey topi
and all, and Mr Francis and Mr Samuel, frisking about in
freshly-laundered drill suits—for the six-weekly church
service was the great social event of their lives. The padre,
a tall man with grey hair and a refined, discoloured face,
wearing pince-nez, was standing on the church steps in his
cassock and surplice, which he had put on in Mr Macgregor’s
house. He was smiling in an amiable but rather
helpless way at four pink-cheeked Karen Christians who
had come up to make their bows to him; for he did not
speak a word of their language nor they of his. There was
one other Oriental Christian, a mournful, dark Indian of
uncertain race, who stood humbly in the background. He
was always present at the church services, but no one knew
who he was or why he was a Christian. Doubtless he had
been captured and baptised in infancy by the missionaries,
for Indians who are converted when adults almost invariably
lapse.

Flory could see Elizabeth coming down the hill, dressed
in lilac-colour, with her aunt and uncle. He had seen her
that morning at the Club—they had had just a minute
alone together before the others came in. He had only
asked her one question.

‘Has Verrall gone—for good?’

‘Yes.’

There had been no need to say any more. He had simply
taken her by the arms and drawn her towards him. She
came willingly, even gladly—there in the clear daylight,
merciless to his disfigured face. For a moment she had
clung to him almost like a child. It was as though he had
saved her or protected her from something. He raised her
face to kiss her, and found with surprise that she was crying.
There had been no time to talk then, not even to say, ‘Will
you marry me?’ No matter, after the service there would
be time enough. Perhaps at his next visit, only six weeks
hence, the padre would marry them.

Ellis and Westfield and the new Military Policeman
were approaching from the Club, where they had been
having a couple of quick ones to last them through the
service. The Forest Officer who had been sent to take
Maxwell’s place, a sallow, tall man, completely bald except
for two whisker-like tufts in front of his ears, was following
them. Flory had not time to say more than ‘Good evening’
to Elizabeth when she arrived. Mattu, seeing that everyone
was present, stopped ringing the bell, and the clergyman
led the way inside, followed by Mr Macgregor, with his
topi against his stomach, and the Lackersteens and the
native Christians. Ellis pinched Flory’s elbow and whispered
boozily in his ear:

‘Come on, line up. Time for the snivel-parade. Quick
march!’

He and the Military Policeman went in behind the
others, arm-in-arm, with a dancing step, the policeman,
till they got inside, wagging his fat behind in imitation of
a pwe-dancer. Flory sat down in the same pew as these two,
opposite Elizabeth, on her right. It was the first time that
he had ever risked sitting with his birthmark towards her.
‘Shut your eyes and count twenty-five,’ whispered Ellis as
they knelt down, drawing a snigger from the policeman.
Mrs Lackersteen had already taken her place at the harmonium,
which was no bigger than a writing-desk. Mattu
stationed himself by the door and began to pull the punkah—it
was so arranged that it only flapped over the front
pews, where the Europeans sat. Flo came nosing up the
aisle, found Flory’s pew and settled down underneath it.
The service began.

Flory was only attending intermittently. He was dimly
aware of standing and kneeling and muttering ‘Amen’ to
interminable prayers, and of Ellis nudging him and whispering
blasphemies behind his hymn-book. But he was too
happy to collect his thoughts. Hell was yielding up Eurydice.
The yellow light flooded in through the open door,
gilding the broad back of Mr Macgregor’s silk coat like
cloth-of-gold. Elizabeth, across the narrow aisle, was so
close to Flory that he could hear every rustle of her dress
and feel, as it seemed to him, the warmth of her body; yet
he would not look at her even once, lest the others should
notice it. The harmonium quavered bronchitically as Mrs
Lackersteen struggled to pump sufficient air into it with the
sole pedal that worked. The singing was a queer, ragged
noise—an earnest booming from Mr Macgregor, a kind
of shamefaced muttering from the other Europeans, and
from the back a loud, wordless lowing, for the Karen
Christians knew the tunes of the hymns but not the words.

They were kneeling down again. ‘More bloody knee-drill,’
Ellis whispered. The air darkened, and there was a
light patter of rain on the roof; the trees outside rustled, and
a cloud of yellow leaves whirled past the window. Flory
watched them through the chinks of his fingers. Twenty
years ago, on winter Sundays in his pew in the parish
church at Home, he used to watch the yellow leaves, as at
this moment, drifting and fluttering against leaden skies.
Was it not possible, now, to begin over again as though
those grimy years had never touched him? Through his
fingers he glanced sidelong at Elizabeth, kneeling with her
head bent and her face hidden in her youthful, mottled
hands. When they were married, when they were married!
What fun they would have together in this alien yet kindly
land! He saw Elizabeth in his camp, greeting him as he
came home tired from work and Ko S’la hurried from the
tent with a bottle of beer; he saw her walking in the forest
with him, watching the hornbills in the peepul trees and
picking nameless flowers, and in the marshy grazing-grounds,
tramping through the cold-weather mist after
snipe and teal. He saw his home as she would remake it.
He saw his drawing-room, sluttish and bachelor-like no
longer, with new furniture from Rangoon, and a bowl of
pink balsams like rosebuds on the table, and books and
watercolours and a black piano. Above all the piano! His
mind lingered upon the piano—symbol, perhaps because
he was unmusical, of civilised and settled life. He was
delivered for ever from the sub-life of the past decade—the
debaucheries, the lies, the pain of exile and solitude, the
dealings with whores and moneylenders and pukka sahibs.

The clergyman stepped to the small wooden lectern that
also served as a pulpit, slipped the band from a roll of
sermon paper, coughed, and announced a text. ‘In the
name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.’

‘Cut it short, for Christ’s sake,’ murmured Ellis.

Flory did not notice how many minutes passed. The
words of the sermon flowed peacefully through his head,
an indistinct burbling sound, almost unheard. When they
were married, he was still thinking, when they were
married——

Hullo! What was happening?

The clergyman had stopped short in the middle of a
word. He had taken off his pince-nez and was shaking
them with a distressed air at someone in the doorway.
There was a fearful, raucous scream.

‘Pike-san pay-like! Pike-san pay-like!’

Everyone jumped in their seats and turned round. It was
Ma Hla May. As they turned she stepped inside the church
and shoved old Mattu violently aside. She shook her fist
at Flory.

‘Pike-san pay-like! Pike-san pay-like! Yes, that’s the one I
mean—Flory, Flory!’ (She pronounced it Porley.) ‘That
one sitting in front there, with black hair! Turn round
and face me, you coward! Where is the money you
promised me?’

She was shrieking like a maniac. The people gaped at
her, too astounded to move or speak. Her face was grey
with powder, her greasy hair was tumbling down, her
longyi was ragged at the bottom. She looked like a screaming
hag of the bazaar. Flory’s bowels seemed to have
turned to ice. Oh God, God! Must they know—must
Elizabeth know—that that was the woman who had been
his mistress? But there was not a hope, not the vestige of
a hope, of any mistake. She had screamed his name over
and over again. Flo, hearing the familiar voice, wriggled
from under the pew, walked down the aisle and wagged
her tail at Ma Hla May. The wretched woman was yelling
out a detailed account of what Flory had done to her.

‘Look at me, you white men, and you women too, look
at me! Look how he has ruined me! Look at these rags I
am wearing! And he sitting there, the liar, the coward,
pretending not to see me! He would let me starve at his
gate like a pariah dog. Ah, but I will shame you! Turn
round and look at me! Look at this body that you have
kissed a thousand times—look—look——’

She began actually to tear her clothes open—the last
insult of a base-born Burmese woman. The harmonium
squeaked as Mrs Lackersteen made a convulsive movement.
People had at last found their wits and begun to stir.
The clergyman, who had been bleating ineffectually,
recovered his voice. ‘Take that woman outside!’ he said
sharply.

Flory’s face was ghastly. After the first moment he had
turned his head away from the door and set his teeth in a
desperate effort to look unconcerned. But it was useless,
quite useless. His face was as yellow as bone, and the sweat
glistened on his forehead. Francis and Samuel, doing perhaps
the first useful deed of their lives, suddenly sprang
from their pew, grabbed Ma Hla May by the arms and
hauled her outside, still screaming.

It seemed very silent in the church when they had finally
dragged her out of hearing. The scene had been so violent,
so squalid, that everyone was upset by it. Even Ellis looked
disgusted. Flory could neither speak nor stir. He sat staring
fixedly at the altar, his face rigid and so bloodless that the
birthmark seemed to glow upon it like a streak of blue
paint. Elizabeth glanced across the aisle at him, and her
revulsion made her almost physically sick. She had not
understood a word of what Ma Hla May was saying, but
the meaning of the scene was perfectly clear. The thought
that he had been the lover of that grey-faced maniacal
creature made her shudder in her bones. But worse than
that, worse than anything, was his ugliness at this moment.
His face appalled her, it was so ghastly, rigid and old. It was
like a skull. Only the birthmark seemed alive in it. She
hated him now for his birthmark. She had never known
till this moment how dishonouring, how unforgivable a
thing it was.

Like the crocodile, U Po Kyin had struck at the weakest
spot. For, needless to say, this scene was U Po Kyin’s doing.
He had seen his chance, as usual, and tutored Ma Hla May
for her part with considerable care. The clergyman
brought his sermon to an end almost at once. As soon as
it was over Flory hurried outside, not looking at any of the
others. It was getting dark, thank God. At fifty yards from
the church he halted, and watched the others making in
couples for the Club. It seemed to him that they were
hurrying. Ah, they would, of course! There would be
something to talk about at the Club tonight! Flo rolled
belly-upwards against his ankles, asking for a game. ‘Get
out, you bloody brute!’ he said, and kicked her. Elizabeth
had stopped at the church door. Mr Macgregor, happy
chance, seemed to be introducing her to the clergyman. In
a moment the two men went on in the direction of Mr
Macgregor’s house, where the clergyman was to stay for
the night, and Elizabeth followed the others, thirty yards
behind them. Flory ran after her and caught up with her
almost at the Club gate.

‘Elizabeth!’

She looked round, saw him, turned white, and would
have hurried on without a word. But his anxiety was too
great, and he caught her by the wrist.

‘Elizabeth! I must—I’ve got to speak to you!’

‘Let me go, will you!’

They began to struggle, and then stopped abruptly.
Two of the Karens who had come out of the church were
standing fifty yards away, gazing at them through the half-darkness
with deep interest. Flory began again in a lower
tone:

‘Elizabeth, I know I’ve no right to stop you like this. But
I must speak to you, I must! Please hear what I’ve got to
say. Please don’t run away from me!’

‘What are you doing? Why are you holding on to my
arm? Let me go this instant!’

‘I’ll let you go—there, look! But do listen to me, please!
Answer me this one thing. After what’s happened, can you
ever forgive me?’

‘Forgive you? What do you mean, forgive you?’

‘I know I’m disgraced. It was the vilest thing to happen!
Only, in a sense it wasn’t my fault. You’ll see that when
you’re calmer. Do you think—not now, it was too bad,
but later—do you think you can forget it?’

‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about. “Forget
it?” What has it got to do with me? I thought it was very
disgusting, but it’s not my business. I can’t think why you’re
questioning me like this at all.’

He almost despaired at that. Her tone and even her
words were the very ones she had used in that earlier
quarrel of theirs. It was the same move over again. Instead
of hearing him out she was going to evade him and put
him off—snub him by pretending that he had no claim
upon her.

‘Elizabeth! Please answer me. Please be fair to me! It’s
serious this time. I don’t expect you to take me back all at
once. You couldn’t, when I’m publicly disgraced like this.
But after all, you virtually promised to marry me—’

‘What! Promised to marry you? When did I promise to
marry you?’

‘Not in words, I know. But it was understood between
us.’

‘Nothing of the kind was understood between us! I
think you are behaving in the most horrible way. I’m
going along to the Club at once. Good evening!’

‘Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Listen. It’s not fair to condemn me
unheard. You knew before what I’d done and you knew
that I’d lived a different life since I met you. What happened
this evening was only an accident. That wretched
woman, who, I admit, was once my—well——’

‘I won’t listen, I won’t listen to such things! I’m going!’

He caught her by the wrists again, and this time held her.
The Karens had disappeared, fortunately.

‘No, no, you shall hear me! I’d rather offend you to the
heart than have this uncertainty. It’s gone on week after
week, month after month, and I’ve never once been able
to speak straight out to you. You don’t seem to know or
care how much you make me suffer. But this time you’ve
got to answer me.’

She struggled in his grip, and she was surprisingly
strong. Her face was more bitterly angry than he had ever
seen or imagined it. She hated him so that she would have
struck him if her hands were free.

‘Let me go! Oh, you beast, you beast, let me go!’

‘My God, my God, that we should fight like this! But
what else can I do? I can’t let you go without even hearing
me. Elizabeth, you must listen to me!’

‘I will not! I will not discuss it! What right have you to
question me? Let me go!’

‘Forgive me, forgive me! This one question. Will you—not
now, but later, when this vile business is forgotten—will
you marry me?’

‘No, never, never!’

‘Don’t say it like that! Don’t make it final. Say no for
the present if you like—but in a month, a year, five
years——’

‘Haven’t I said no? Why must you keep on and on?’

‘Elizabeth, listen to me. I’ve tried again and again to tell
you what you mean to me—oh, it’s so useless talking about
it! But do try and understand. Haven’t I told you something
of the life we live here? The sort of horrible death-in-life!
The decay, the loneliness, the self-pity? Try and
realise what it means, and that you’re the sole person on
earth who could save me from it.’

‘Will you let me go? Why do you have to make this
dreadful scene?’

‘Does it mean nothing to you when I say that I love you?
I don’t believe you’ve ever realised what it is that I want
from you. If you like, I’d marry you and promise never
even to touch you with my finger. I wouldn’t mind even
that, so long as you were with me. But I can’t go on with
my life alone, always alone. Can’t you bring yourself ever
to forgive me?’

‘Never, never! I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last
man on earth. I’d as soon marry the—the sweeper!’

She had begun crying now. He saw that she meant
what she said. The tears came into his own eyes. He said
again:

‘For the last time. Remember that it’s something to have
one person in the world who loves you. Remember that
though you’ll find men who are richer, and younger, and
better in every way than I, you’ll never find one who cares
for you so much. And though I’m not rich, at least I could
make you a home. There’s a way of living—civilised,
decent——’

‘Haven’t we said enough?’ she said more calmly. ‘Will
you let me go before somebody comes?’

He relaxed his grip on her wrists. He had lost her, that
was certain. Like a hallucination, painfully clear, he saw
again their home as he had imagined it; he saw their
garden, and Elizabeth feeding Nero and the pigeons on the
drive by the sulphur-yellow phloxes that grew as high as
her shoulder; and the drawing-room, with the watercolours
on the walls, and the balsams in the china bowl
mirrored by the table, and the bookshelves, and the black
piano. The impossible, mythical piano—symbol of everything
that that futile accident had wrecked!

‘You should have a piano,’ he said despairingly.

‘I don’t play the piano.’

He let her go. It was no use continuing. She was no
sooner free of him than she took to her heels and actually
ran into the Club garden, so hateful was his presence to her.
Among the trees she stopped to take off her spectacles and
remove the signs of tears from her face. Oh, the beast, the
beast! He had hurt her wrists abominably. Oh, what an
unspeakable beast he was! When she thought of his face as
it had looked in church, yellow and glistening with the
hideous birthmark upon it, she could have wished him
dead. It was not what he had done that horrified her. He
might have committed a thousand abominations and she
could have forgiven him. But not after that shameful,
squalid scene, and the devilish ugliness of his disfigured face
in that moment. It was, finally, the birthmark that had
damned him.

Her aunt would be furious when she heard that she had
refused Flory. And there was her uncle and his leg-pinching—between
the two of them, life here would
become impossible. Perhaps she would have to go Home
unmarried after all. Black beetles! No matter. Anything—spinsterhood,
drudgery, anything—sooner than the alternative.
Never, never would she yield to a man who had
been so disgraced! Death sooner, far sooner. If there had
been mercenary thoughts in her mind an hour ago, she had
forgotten them. She did not even remember that Verrall
had jilted her and that to have married Flory would have
saved her face. She knew only that he was dishonoured and
less than a man, and that she hated him as she would have
hated a leper or a lunatic. The instinct was deeper than
reason or even self-interest, and she could no more have
disobeyed it than she could have stopped breathing.

Flory, as he turned up the hill, did not run, but he
walked as fast as he could. What he had to do must be done
quickly. It was getting very dark. The wretched Flo, who
even now had not grasped that anything serious was the
matter, trotted close to his heels, whimpering in a self-pitying
manner to reproach him for the kick he had given
her. As he came up the path a wind blew through the
plantain trees, rattling the tattered leaves and bringing a
scent of damp. It was going to rain again. Ko S’la had laid
the dinner-table and was removing some flying beetles
that had committed suicide against the petrol-lamp.
Evidently he had not heard about the scene in church yet.

‘The holy one’s dinner is ready. Will the holy one dine
now?’

‘No, not yet. Give me that lamp.’

He took the lamp, went into the bedroom and shut the
door. The stale scent of dust and cigarette-smoke met him,
and in the white, unsteady glare of the lamp he could see
the mildewed books and the lizards on the wall. So he was
back again to this—to the old, secret life—after everything,
back where he had been before.

Was it not possible to endure it? He had endured it
before. There were palliatives—books, his garden, drink,
work, whoring, shooting, conversations with the doctor.

No, it was not endurable any longer. Since Elizabeth’s
coming the power to suffer and above all to hope, which
he had thought dead in him, had sprung to new life. The
half-comfortable lethargy in which he had lived was
broken. And if he suffered now, there was far worse to
come. In a little while someone else would marry her. How
he could picture it—the moment when he heard the news!—‘Did
you hear the Lackersteen kid’s got off at last? Poor
old So-and-so—booked for the altar, God help him,’ etc.
etc. And the casual question—‘Oh, really? When is it to
be?’—stiffening one’s face, pretending to be uninterested.
And then her wedding day approaching, her bridal night—ah,
not that! Obscene, obscene. Keep your eyes fixed on
that. Obscene. He dragged his tin uniform case from under
the bed, took out his automatic pistol, slid a clip of cartridges
into the magazine, and pulled one into the breech.

Ko S’la was remembered in his will. There remained
Flo. He laid his pistol on the table and went outside. Flo
was playing with Ba Shin, Ko S’la’s youngest son, under
the lee of the cookhouse, where the servants had left the
remains of a wood fire. She was dancing round him with
her small teeth bared, pretending to bite him, while the
tiny boy, his belly red in the glow of the embers, smacked
weakly at her, laughing and yet half frightened.

‘Flo! Come here, Flo!’

She heard him and came obediently, and then stopped
short at the bedroom door. She seemed to have grasped
now that there was something wrong. She backed a little
and stood looking timorously up at him, unwilling to enter
the bedroom.

‘Come in here!’

She wagged her tail, but did not move.

‘Come on, Flo! Good old Flo! Come on!’

Flo was suddenly stricken with terror. She whined, her
tail went down, and she shrank back. ‘Come here, blast
you!’ he cried, and he took her by the collar and flung her
into the room, shutting the door behind her. He went to
the table for the pistol.

‘Now come here! Do as you’re told!’

She crouched down and whined for forgiveness. It hurt
him to hear it. ‘Come on, old girl! Dear old Flo! Master
wouldn’t hurt you. Come here!’ She crawled very slowly
towards his feet, flat on her belly, whining, her head down
as though afraid to look at him. When she was a yard away
he fired, blowing her skull to fragments.

Her shattered brain looked like red velvet. Was that
what he would look like? The heart, then, not the head.
He could hear the servants running out of their quarters
and shouting—they must have heard the sound of the
shot. He hurriedly tore open his coat and pressed the
muzzle of the pistol against his shirt. A tiny lizard, translucent
like a creature of gelatine, was stalking a white moth
along the edge of the table. Flory pulled the trigger with
his thumb.

As Ko S’la burst into the room, for a moment he saw
nothing but the dead body of the dog. Then he saw his
master’s feet, heels upwards, projecting from beyond the
bed. He yelled to the others to keep the children out of the
room, and all of them surged back from the doorway with
screams. Ko S’la fell on his knees beside Flory’s body, at
the same moment as Ba Pe came running through the
veranda.

‘Has he shot himself?’

‘I think so. Turn him over on his back. Ah, look at that!
Run for the Indian doctor! Run for your life!’

There was a neat hole, no bigger than that made by a
pencil passing through a sheet of blotting-paper, in Flory’s
shirt. He was obviously quite dead. With great difficulty
Ko S’la managed to drag him onto the bed, for the other
servants refused to touch the body. It was only twenty
minutes before the doctor arrived. He had heard only a
vague report that Flory was hurt, and had bicycled up the
hill at top speed through a storm of rain. He threw his
bicycle down in the flower-bed and hurried in through the
veranda. He was out of breath, and could not see through
his spectacles. He took them off, peering myopically at the
bed. ‘What iss it, my friend?’ he said anxiously. ‘Where are
you hurt?’ Then, coming closer, he saw what was on the
bed, and uttered a harsh sound.

‘Ach, what is this? What has happened to him?’

‘He has shot himself, sir.’

The doctor fell on his knees, tore Flory’s shirt open and
put his ear to his chest. An expression of agony came into
his face, and he seized the dead man by the shoulders and
shook him as though mere violence could bring him to life.
One arm fell limply over the edge of the bed. The doctor
lifted it back again, and then, with the dead hand between
his own, suddenly burst into tears. Ko S’la was standing at
the foot of the bed, his brown face full of lines. The doctor
stood up, and then losing control of himself for a moment,
leaned against the bedpost and wept noisily and grotesquely,
his back turned on Ko S’la. His fat shoulders were
quivering. Presently he recovered himself and turned
round again.

‘How did this happen?’

‘We heard two shots. He did it himself, that is certain.
I do not know why.’

‘How did you know that he did it on purpose? How do
you know that it was not an accident?’

For answer, Ko S’la pointed silently to Flo’s corpse. The
doctor thought for a moment, and then, with gentle,
practised hands, swathed the dead man in the sheet and
knotted it at foot and head. With death, the birthmark had
faded immediately, so that it was no more than a faint grey
stain.

‘Bury the dog at once. I will tell Mr Macgregor that this
happened accidentally while he was cleaning his revolver.
Be sure that you bury the dog. Your master was my friend.
It shall not be written on his tombstone that he committed
suicide.’

XXV

It was lucky that the padre should have been at Kyauktada,
for he was able, before catching the train on the
following evening, to read the burial service in due form
and even to deliver a short address on the virtues of the
dead man. All Englishmen are virtuous when they are
dead. ‘Accidental death’ was the official verdict (Dr
Veraswami had proved with all his medico-legal skill that
the circumstances pointed to accident) and it was duly
inscribed upon the tombstone. Not that anyone believed
it, of course. Flory’s real epitaph was the remark, very
occasionally uttered—for an Englishman who dies in
Burma is so soon forgotten—‘Flory? Oh yes, he was a dark
chap, with a birthmark. He shot himself in Kyauktada in
1926. Over a girl, people said. Bloody fool.’ Probably no
one, except Elizabeth, was much surprised at what had
happened. There is a rather large number of suicides
among the Europeans in Burma, and they occasion very
little surprise.

Flory’s death had several results. The first and most
important of them was that Dr Veraswami was ruined,
even as he had foreseen. The glory of being a white man’s
friend—the one thing that had saved him before—had
vanished. Flory’s standing with the other Europeans had
never been good, it is true; but he was after all a white man,
and his friendship conferred a certain prestige. Once he was
dead, the doctor’s ruin was assured. U Po Kyin waited the
necessary time, and then struck again, harder than ever. It
was barely three months before he had fixed it in the head
of every European in Kyauktada that the doctor was an
unmitigated scoundrel. No public accusation was ever
made against him—U Po Kyin was most careful of that.
Even Ellis would have been puzzled to say just what
scoundrelism the doctor had been guilty of; but still, it was
agreed that he was a scoundrel. By degrees the general
suspicion of him crystallised in a single Burmese phrase—shok
de. Veraswami, it was said, was quite a clever little
chap in his way—quite a good doctor for a native—but
he was thoroughly shok de. Shok de means, approximately,
untrustworthy, and when a ‘native’ official comes to be
known as shok de, there is an end of him.

The dreaded nod and wink passed somewhere in high
places, and the doctor was reverted to the rank of Assistant
Surgeon and transferred to Mandalay General Hospital. He
is still there, and is likely to remain. Mandalay is rather a
disagreeable town—it is dusty and intolerably hot, and it
is said to have five main products all beginning with P,
namely, pagodas, pariahs, pigs, priests and prostitutes—and
the routine-work at the hospital is a dreary business. The
doctor lives just outside the hospital grounds in a little
bakehouse of a bungalow with a corrugated iron fence
round its tiny compound, and in the evenings he runs a
private clinic to supplement his reduced pay. He has joined
a second-rate club frequented by Indian pleaders. Its chief
glory is a single European member—a Glasgow electrician
named Macdougall, sacked from the Irrawaddy Flotilla
Company for drunkenness, and now making a precarious
living out of a garage. Macdougall is a dull lout, only
interested in whisky and magnetos. The doctor, who will
never believe that a white man can be a fool, tries almost
every night to engage him in what he still calls ‘cultured
conversation’; but the results are very unsatisfying.

Ko S’la inherited four hundred rupees under Flory’s
will, and with his family he set up a tea-shop in the bazaar.
But the shop failed, as it was bound to do with the two
women fighting in it at all hours, and Ko S’la and Ba Pe
were obliged to go back to service. Ko S’la was an accomplished
servant. Besides the useful arts of pimping, dealing
with moneylenders, carrying master to bed when drunk
and making pick-me-ups known as prairie oysters on the
following morning, he could sew, darn, refill cartridges,
attend to a horse, press a suit, and decorate a dinner-table
with wonderful, intricate patterns of chopped leaves and
dyed rice-grains. He was worth fifty rupees a month. But
he and Ba Pe had fallen into lazy ways in Flory’s service,
and they were sacked from one job after another. They had
a bad year of poverty, and little Ba Shin developed a
cough, and finally coughed himself to death one stifling
hot-weather night. Ko S’la is now a second boy to a
Rangoon rice-broker with a neurotic wife who makes
unending kit-kit, and Ba Pe is pani-wallah in the same
house at sixteen rupees a month. Ma Hla May is in a brothel
in Mandalay. Her good looks are all but gone, and her
clients pay her only four annas and sometimes kick her and
beat her. Perhaps more bitterly than any of the others, she
regrets the good time when Flory was alive, and when she
had not the wisdom to put aside any of the money she
extracted from him.

U Po Kyin realised all his dreams, except one. After the
doctor’s disgrace, it was inevitable that U Po Kyin should
be elected to the Club, and elected he was, in spite of bitter
protests from Ellis. In the end the other Europeans came
to be rather glad that they had elected him, for he was a
bearable addition to the Club. He did not come too often,
was ingratiating in his manner, stood drinks freely, and
developed almost at once into a brilliant bridge-player. A
few months later he was transferred from Kyauktada and
promoted. For a whole year, before his retirement, he
officiated as Deputy Commissioner, and during that year
alone he made twenty thousand rupees in bribes. A month
after his retirement he was summoned to a durbar in
Rangoon, to receive the decoration that had been awarded
to him by the Indian Government.

It was an impressive scene, that durbar. On the platform,
hung with flags and flowers, sat the Governor, frock-coated,
upon a species of throne, with a bevy of aides-de-camp
and secretaries behind him. All round the hall, like
glittering waxworks, stood the tall, bearded sowars of the
Governor’s bodyguard, with pennoned lances in their
hands. Outside, a band was blaring at intervals. The gallery
was gay with the white ingyis and pink scarves of Burmese
ladies, and in the body of the hall a hundred men or more
were waiting to receive their decorations. There were
Burmese officials in blazing Mandalay pasos, and Indians in
cloth-of-gold pagris, and British officers in full-dress
uniform with clanking sword-scabbards, and old thugyis
with their grey hair knotted behind their heads and silver-hilted
dahs slung from their shoulders. In a high, clear voice
a secretary was reading out the list of awards, which varied
from the CIE to certificates of honour in embossed silver
cases. Presently U Po Kyin’s turn came and the secretary
read from his scroll:

‘To U Po Kyin, Deputy Assistant Commissioner,
retired, for long and loyal service and especially for his
timely aid in crushing a most dangerous rebellion in
Kyauktada district’—and so on and so on.

Then two henchmen placed there for the purpose
hoisted U Po Kyin upright, and he waddled to the platform,
bowed as low as his belly would permit, and was
duly decorated and felicitated, while Ma Kin and other
supporters clapped wildly and fluttered their scarves from
the gallery.

U Po Kyin had done all that mortal man could do. It
was time now to be making ready for the next world—in
short, to begin building pagodas. But unfortunately, this
was the very point at which his plans went wrong. Only
three days after the Governor’s durbar, before so much as
a brick of those atoning pagodas had been laid, U Po Kyin
was stricken with apoplexy and died without speaking
again. There is no armour against fate. Ma Kin was heartbroken
at the disaster. Even if she had built the pagodas
herself, it would have availed U Po Kyin nothing; no merit
can be acquired save by one’s own act. She suffers greatly
to think of U Po Kyin where he must be now—wandering
in God knows what dreadful subterranean hell of fire, and
darkness, and serpents, and genii. Or even if he has escaped
the worst, his other fear has been realised, and he has
returned to the earth in the shape of a rat or a frog. Perhaps
at this very moment a snake is devouring him.

As to Elizabeth, things fell out better than she had
expected. After Flory’s death Mrs Lackersteen, dropping
all pretences for once, said openly that there were no men
in this dreadful place and the only hope was to go and stay
several months in Rangoon or Maymyo. But she could
not very well send Elizabeth to Rangoon or Maymyo
alone, and to go with her practically meant condemning
Mr Lackersteen to death from delirium tremens. Months
passed, and the rains reached their climax, and Elizabeth
had just made up her mind that she must go Home after
all, penniless and unmarried, when—Mr Macgregor
proposed to her. He had had it in mind for a long time;
indeed, he had only been waiting for a decent interval to
elapse after Flory’s death.

Elizabeth accepted him gladly. He was rather old, perhaps,
but a Deputy Commissioner is not to be despised—certainly
he was a far better match than Flory. They are
very happy. Mr Macgregor was always a good-hearted
man, but he has grown more human and likeable since his
marriage. His voice booms less, and he has given up his
morning exercises. Elizabeth has grown mature surprisingly
quickly, and a certain hardness of manner that always
belonged to her has become accentuated. Her servants live
in terror of her, though she speaks no Burmese. She has an
exhaustive knowledge of the Civil List, gives charming
little dinner-parties and knows how to put the wives of
subordinate officials in their places—in short, she fills with
complete success the position for which Nature had
designed her from the first, that of a burra memsahib.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.
Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been
employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious
printer errors occur.